We’re rolling in a Frankenstein. A not so armored vehicle that’s been done up by a few genius engineers who can’t walk past a bit of steel without welding it to something with wheels.

Hillbilly armor, they call it. Just shit welded on wherever it’ll fit. It’d be nice to have the full sleek military machines you see in movies and training videos, but in real life, the military industrial complex is held together with duct tape.

If she’s afraid to be rolling around in this patchwork quilt of spare parts, she doesn’t show it. I’m not sure she actually realizes what we’re in. It was pretty dark and she was still half asleep when I got her out of bed and into this thing.

There are three other guys with us. This is basically reconnaissance, roll out into the depths of a Middle Eastern night and see what’s happening. They like to move at night when it’s cold, and when they think we’re not watching. Heat sensing technology lights them up like Christmas trees though. Right now it’s a pitch black ocean of dark danger out there.

We move slow. There are bombs everywhere. It’s not safe to take the tracks we usually take, and it’s not safe to go off-track either because they’ll put them in both places. We have a Soteria device located above the cab that scans for the things, but nothing is perfect. Basically, we’re playing minesweeper.

“Fuck,” the driver’s buddy curses as a blip lights up on the monitor. There’s a damn daisy chain of the things laid out near the ridge we’re wanting to ascend. The people we’re fighting aren’t high tech, but they understand the basics of war which never change, like securing high ground.

It takes us a long way to pick our way through and find a safe spot to look out over. We could have done this with drones, but a drone can’t do much about a problem. It can only identify it. While we sit, the others are transmitting information back to base about the mines and their location. Some of the bomb squad will come out and deal with them, hopefully successfully.

Intelligence suggests there’s a weapons pipeline running through the valley below. Most of the time the local boys avoid valleys. They’re too easy to set up ambushes in. But they also have shit lines of sight for most of our tech, and as many of us are out here, we can’t cover everything all the time.

The war is being fought beneath our noses. We cover this country like an electronic hawk, and still they manage to get away with transporting the essentials of war: weapons and fuel.

As night turns into day, and our post becomes completely visible, we back off and head away. If they were out there, they moved earlier, or some scout spotted us and warned the others off.

Dawn is breaking as we head into what’s supposed to be a friendly village. Mary is impressing me so far. She’s dead quiet. She literally hasn’t said a word since we started. I’ve nudged her a few times to see if she’s awake and alright, but she’s alert and quiet. A little huntress, her dark hair slicked back into a bun behind her head.

Some of the village kids come running, hoping we have something for them. There’s a bag of candy we got for them. Winning hearts and minds with melted chocolate from the other side of the world. The women don’t come near us. They stay back, shades of black and red and brown, covered by their hijabs. There’s still a lot of suspicion and mistrust around. They’re liberated today, but they’re worried we’ll pull back and the Taliban will sweep back in. It’s not an entirely unfounded fear. We can’t stay here forever, but these people will live and die within a hundred miles of where they were born. They’re living like we all used to, at the mercy of war bands who rush through, kill men, carry off women, and leave everything to burn if it doesn’t meet their satisfaction.

We stop in the village and get out. I have a couple of contacts I’d like to talk to, men who are brave enough to risk horrible deaths to give us information. I tell Mary to stay in the vehicle. If we have to make a quick exit, I don’t want to have to rush around and find her.