A group of you go for tattoos. Crossed rifles and slogans and death’s heads. You can’t decide, think of backing out. A tall, funny kid named Cooper puts his arm around your shoulders, says, “Come on, buddy. Don’t let us down.”

You get an American flag on your bicep. Later, looking in the mirror, you flex arms grown thick with muscle, and the flag seems to wave, and you feel a surge in your chest, a soft fluttery feeling like a girl’s fingers brushing your skin.

“So how much do you owe this Vance guy?”

Cooper shrugs. “Ten grand.”

You blow a breath. “I don’t have that much.”

“Wouldn’t matter if you did.” He shakes his head. “I heard through a friend, Vance is sending a guy to waste me. Wants to show that even a soldier isn’t exempt.”

“Can your buddy help?”

“He’s just a friend, not a buddy.”

“What about the guy who’s coming after you?”

“I’ve never met him. But he’s got a bad reputation.”

You lean forward, put your boots on the bar rail. You wear jeans and a T-shirt these days, but the boots are a hard habit to quit. The thing, the army, it gets into you. It’s designed to, to teach you to walk and talk and shit the army way, to break you down and make you part of a larger whole. That was what you liked about it.

You say, “Maybe you should get out of town.”

Cooper stares at you. “Hey, Nick,” he says, softly, “fuck you.”

And the heat rises in your cheeks as you remember Cooper behind the M240 Bravo, fingers pulsing in tight clenches that rip the air with explosions. Fighting for his country, shouting and firing as you stand next to him, readying the next ammo belt and trying not to panic. Your first firefight is nothing like you expected, not like the movies you’d watched or video games you’d played. You don’t feel like a lean, mean killing machine, not even a little bit. There is a flash, and then a rocket hits the vehicle ahead, knocking it sideways in a wave of flame. You point to where the man had fired, and Cooper swings the machine gun, the bullets tearing chunks from walls and kicking up dust.

When it’s over, you walked through the humming distance of things, amidst rubble and trash and thousands of spent shell casings. The forward vehicle survived, but the rocket killed two soldiers immediately, and though the ringing in your ears muffles sound, it’s not enough to shut out the screams of a third whose belly was opened.

And the funny thing is that it’s in the aftermath that the fear really hits, as you realize that it was just chance that their vehicle was in front; not strategy or fate or a plan, just chance, a matter of which driver had pulled out first. That the difference between life and death was measured in feet and in seconds. Fear burst the door of its basement cage and seized you and didn’t let go, not then and not since.

“Sorry,” you say, and don’t explain what for, and don’t have to. The two of you sit in silence. When the door bangs open, you jump, and even though it’s been six months, reach for a weapon that isn’t there. It only takes a second to come back to the bar, but when you do, you see that Cooper jumped, too.

He gives you a sheepish grin, spreads his hands. “It’s funny,” he says. “People ask what it was like. And I can’t remember. Not really. Too big, too much. After a while, it started to feel like nothing. Beyond computation.”

You sip your beer, and nod.

“The guy Vance is sending,” Cooper says, “they say he cuts your ears off first.” He looks at you, and in the neon light of the bar, you can see fear twist in his eyes like a trash bag in a dark ocean current.

“That’s not going to happen,” you say.

The M1126 Stryker is twenty-three feet long by nine wide and features an eight-by-eight suspension, tires that can adjust pressure on the fly and roll for miles after being blown, and a 350 HP Caterpillar engine capable of driving the seventeen-ton vehicle at speeds of sixty miles per. It looks like an olive drab duck with too many legs, and the inside smells of the sweat and farts of eleven men.

It is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.

You are the assistant gunner for the rear weapons team. You wanted to be the primary, even though you’re not sure you have what it takes to pull the trigger on a living, breathing person. Still, at the zeroing range you nailed more targets than anybody, figured you had it in the bag. But the sergeant picked Cooper as the primary. You saw the two of them talking, Coop gesturing at you, and he says that he was telling the sarge you should be gunner.

But walking around the Stryker that will be yours, the one you will share with ten other men, the one in which you will serve your country, it doesn’t matter. You run your hands gently along the armor.

“Would you look at that?” Cooper stands in the doorway. He nudges the soldier next to him. “I think we got ourselves a true believer.” He smiles to let you know he’s just busting balls. “Hey, you sure it’s your arm got the flag tattooed on it?”

After you leave Cooper in the bar, you drive for a while, watching the sun set the sky on fire. It’s that hour when the shadows are soft and everything is lit from within. Tourists wander the Strip holding three-foot souvenir glasses. People in business suits talk on cell phones. A cute girl steps out of Whole Foods carrying bags stuffed with free-range macrobiotic whatever. Everyone is happy, on vacation or on their way home.

For a second, you want more than anything to turn the wheel of the Bronco hard and jam on the gas and blast right through the bright front window of the grocery store.

You clench and unclench your fists, take deep breaths. A car behind you honks, and you move along.

From the corner market you get a cheesesteak and a six-pack. You go to the room you rent and turn on the TV and eat dinner sitting at your counter, the news you aren’t watching running in the background.

You think about what Cooper said, how life over there had been too big to grasp, to hold. You remember a conversation with a soldier who was re-upping, how when he talked about getting back to Iraq, he slipped and called it home.

You light a cigarette and think about the girl who watched you win at the Golden Gloves. About the way her hair always smelled clean, and a moment a lifetime ago, lying in bed, when she looked up with eyes like June and said she loved you.

The body on the floor of the Mosul apartment has half a dozen wounds. He’s on his belly, one arm out like he was reaching for something, head cocked sideways and part of his face missing. You recognize him. He’s one of the men who frequently hangs around the forward operating base, selling Miami cigarettes. Other things, too, the rumor goes.

Cooper kneels beside him, bent over the body at an awkward angle as though he is going to hug it. The image sticks with you, comes back sometimes months later, along with the abruptness with which Cooper straightens as you come in, and how the first words out of his mouth are “I had to.”

You narrow your eyes, say, “What are you doing?”

“Checking for a pulse.”

The fear is in you, has been since the firefight. Sometimes you feel your fear wears you like clothing. Today is bad, a dangerous assignment, the squad split up and working the houses separately. Poor procedure, but that was the order, and so when you heard the shots, you were alone in the alley, and came running, jumping piles of trash and discarded water bottles. It occurs to you that the rest of the house is not secure, that there may be others, and the fear spikes again.

Then you notice. “Where’s his weapon?”

Cooper winces, and looks at the body, and then back at you. “I told him to get down, but he came at me, and I thought…”

You reach for your radio.

“Wait.” Cooper takes a step forward. “Wait.” He puts his palms together like he’s praying. “If they realize he wasn’t armed.”