This was not a Bubba I’d ever seen before. All traces of psychosis seemed to have vanished. Along with the disappearance of the loose-cannon aspect, his voice had changed, deepened slightly, and the aura of otherness and loneliness that usually hovered around him had disappeared, given way to a total confidence and ease with his surroundings.

He was, I realized, home. He was as in his element as he ever could be. He was a warrior, and he’d been called to battle, and he knew he was born to it.

As we followed him up the road, I saw what men in Beirut must have seen-that if it came to battle, no matter who your commanding officer was, it was Bubba you’d follow, Bubba you’d listen to, Bubba you’d depend on to lead you through the fire and back to safety.

He was a born sergeant; next to him, John Wayne was a pussy.

He unslung the duffel bag from his back and brought it around under his arm. He unzipped it as he walked, pulled an M-16 out, and looked back at us.

“You sure you don’t want one of these?”

Both of us shook our heads. An M-16. I’d probably fire it once, break my shoulder.

“Pistols are fine,” I said.

“You got extra clips?”

I nodded. “Four.”

He looked at Angie. “Speed-loaders?”

She nodded. “Three.”

Angie looked at me. She swallowed. I knew how she felt. My mouth was getting kind of dry, too.

We crossed the planks and passed the pump shed.

Bubba said, “We find this house, and get inside? Anything moves, shoot it. Don’t question. If it’s not chained down, it’s not a hostage. If it’s not a hostage, it ain’t friendly. Clear?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“Ange?” He looked back at her.

“Yeah. Clear.”

Bubba paused and stared at Angie, her pale face and large eyes.

“You up for this?” he asked her softly.

She nodded several times.

“Because-”

“Don’t be a sexist, Bubba. This isn’t hand-to-hand combat. All I have to do is point and shoot, and I’m a better shot than either of you guys.”

Bubba looked at me. “You, on the other hand…”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’ll go back home.”

He smiled. Angie smiled. I smiled. In the still of the bog and the dark of night, I had the feeling it was the last time any of us would smile for a while.

“All right,” Bubba said. “It’s all three of us, then. Just remember, the only sin in combat is hesitation. So don’t fucking hesitate.”

We stopped at the tree line and Bubba unslung the bag from his shoulder and lay it softly on the ground. He opened it and removed three square objects with head straps tied to the back and lenses protruding from the front. He handed two of them to us.

“Put ’em on.”

We did, and the world turned green. The dark bushes and trees were the color of mint, the moss was emerald, the air was a light kelly hue.

“Take your time,” Bubba said. “Get used to it.”

He removed a huge pair of infrared binoculars and raised them to his eyes, panned across the woods in quarter-inch increments.

The green felt assaultive, nauseating. My.45 felt like a hot poker against the small of my back. The drought in my mouth had worked its way down my throat, seemed to be closing off my respiratory passages. And, quite honestly, with the bulky infrared glasses attached to my face, I also felt really silly. I felt like a Power Ranger.

“Got it,” Bubba said.

“What?”

“Follow my finger.”

He raised his arm and pointed and I sighted down the tip and followed the seaweed world through bushes and brambles and around trees until I saw the windows.

There were two of them. They suddenly stared back at us from the forest floor like oblong periscopes. They were only a foot and a half tall, but seeing them appear out of the green it was nearly impossible to imagine how we’d missed them.

“No way you could have seen them in daylight,” Bubba said, “unless you caught a reflection off the panes. Everything but the glass is painted green, even the trim.”

“Well, thanks for-”

He silenced me with a raised finger and cocked his head. About thirty seconds later, I heard it, too, a car engine and tires rolling up the access road toward us. The tires squished the soft earth in the clearing to the north, and Bubba whacked our shoulders and picked up his duffel bag, walked in a crouch to our left along the tree line. We followed as the car door opened and closed, and then shoes crunched down the path to the bog embankment.

Bubba disappeared into the trees at the far edge, and we ducked back in there with him.

A green Scott Pearse stepped out onto the cross and his footsteps banged hard off the wood as he half walked, half trotted past the equipment shed and then over to our side. He seemed about to burst into the woods when he stopped on the embankment and went very still.

His head swiveled slowly in our direction, and for one long moment, he seemed to look directly into my eyes. He bent at the waist and squinted. He held out his arms as if to silence the mosquitoes and mist along the bog, the distant slapping of the fruit in the water. He closed his eyes and listened.

After what felt like a month or so, he opened his eyes and shook his head. He parted the branches in front of him and walked into the woods.

I turned my head, but Bubba wasn’t beside us anymore, and I’d never heard him move. He was about ten yards ahead, crouched, hands resting on his knees as he watched Scott Pearse make his way through the woods.

I turned my head back toward Pearse, watched him stop about ten yards before the two windows and reach down to the forest floor. He raised his arm and a bulkhead door came up with it. He bent, lowered himself, and closed the door over his head.

Bubba was suddenly back beside us again.

“We don’t know if he’s got motion detectors or trip wires he turns on from inside, but I figure we got maybe a minute. Follow me. Exactly.”

He moved out onto the embankment again like the world’s swiftest, bulkiest jungle cat, Angie followed ten steps behind him, and I followed five steps behind her.

Bubba turned sharply into the trees, and we went in behind him. He never showed a stutter-step’s worth of hesitation as he raced silently across the same terrain Scott Pearse had trod.

He reached the door in the forest floor and waved quickly at us.

We reached him and I suddenly felt the strongest desire in the world to slow down, to backtrack, to put the brakes on for a moment. This was all happening faster than I would have imagined. Blindingly fast. Too fast to breathe.

“It moves, shoot,” Bubba whispered, and flicked the M-16’s selector switch forward to full auto. “Keep your goggles on until we know there’s light inside. If there is, don’t waste time taking them off your head. Drop them down your face, let ’em hang from your neck. Ready?”

I said, “Ah…”

“One-two-three,” Bubba said.

“Jesus,” Angie said.

“No bullshit,” Bubba whispered harshly. “We’re in or out. Right now. No time.”

I took my.45 from the holster at the small of my back, thumbed off the safety. I wiped my palm on my jeans.

“In,” Angie said.

“In,” I said.

“We get separated,” Bubba said, “I’ll see you back in the world.”

He grinned and reached for the door handle.

“I’m so happy,” he whispered.

I gave Angie a quick, bewildered glance, and she tightened her hands on her.38 to quell her shakes, and Bubba threw back the door.

A white stone staircase greeted us, dropping steeply fifteen steps before it ended at a steel door.

Bubba knelt on the top of the staircase, aimed his M-16, and fired several rounds into the upper left and lower left corners of the door. The bullets hammered the steel and erupted into yellow sparks. The noise was deafening.

The windows ahead of us shattered, and I saw muzzles pointing our way. We ducked low, and Bubba jumped to the bottom of the stairs and kicked the door off its shattered hinges.