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was now all smiles, and – perhaps in the interest of solidifying Guatemalan-American relations, perhaps because he was proud of his work – he went over to the jeep and lifted the girl’s head by the hair so Mingolla could see her face.
‘Bandida!
’ he said, arranging his features into a comical frown. The girl’s face was not unlike the soldier’s, with the same blade of a nose and prominent cheekbones. Fresh blood glistened on her lips, and the faded tattoo of a coiled serpent was centered on her forehead. Her eyes were open, and staring into them – despite their cloudiness – Mingolla felt that he had made a connection, that she was regarding him sadly from somewhere behind those eyes, continuing to die past the point of clinical death. Then an ant crawled out of her nostril, perching on the crimson curve of her lip, and the eyes looked merely vacant. The soldier let her head fall and wrapped his hand in the hair of a second corpse; but before he could lift it, Mingolla turned away and headed down the road toward the airbase.
    There was a row of helicopters lined up at the edge of the landing strip, and walking between them, Mingolla saw the two pilots who had given him a ride from the Ant Farm. They were stripped to shorts and helmets, wearing baseball gloves, and they were playing catch, lofting high flies to each other. Behind them, atop their Sikorsky, a mechanic was fussing with the main rotor housing. The sight of the pilots didn’t disturb Mingolla as it had the previous day; in fact, he found their weirdness somehow comforting. Just then, the ball eluded one of them and bounced Mingolla’s way. He snagged it and flipped it back to the nearer of the pilots, who came loping over and stood pounding the ball into the pocket of his glove. With his black reflecting face and sweaty, muscular torso, he looked like an eager young mutant.
    ‘How’s she goin’?’ he asked. ‘Seem like you a little tore down this mornin’.’
    ‘I feel okay,’ said Mingolla defensively. ‘’Course’ – he smiled,making light of his defensiveness – ‘maybe you see something I don’t.’
    The pilot shrugged; the sprightliness of the gesture seemed to convey good humor.
    Mingolla pointed to the mechanic. You guys broke down, huh?’
    ‘Just overhaul. We’re goin’ back up early tomorrow. Need a lift?’
    ‘Naw, I’m here for a week.’
    An eerie current flowed through Mingolla’s left hand, setting up a palsied shaking. It was bad this time, and he jammed the hand into his hip pocket. The olive-drab line of barracks appeared to twitch, to suffer a dislocation and shift farther away; the choppers and jeeps and uniformed men on the strip looked toylike: pieces in a really neat GI joe Airbase kit. Mingolla’s hand beat against the fabric of his trousers like a sick heart.
    ‘I gotta get going,’ he said.
    ‘Hang in there,’ said the pilot. ‘You be awright.’
    The words had a flavor of diagnostic assurance that almost convinced Mingolla of the pilot’s ability to know his fate, that things such as fate could be known. ‘You honestly believe what you were saying yesterday, man?’ he asked. ‘’Bout your helmets? ’Bout knowing the future?’
    The pilot bounced the ball on the concrete, snatched it at the peak of its rebound, and stared down at it. Mingolla could see the seams and brand name reflected on the visor, but nothing of the face behind it, no evidence either of normalcy or deformity. ‘I get asked that a lot,’ said the pilot. People raggin’ me, y’know. But you ain’t raggin’ me, are you, man?’
    ‘No,’ said Mingolla. ‘I’m not.’
    ‘Well,’ said the pilot, ‘it’s this way. We buzz round up in the nothin’, and we see shit on the ground, shit nobody else sees. Then we blow that shit away. Been doin’ it like that for ten months, and we’re still alive. Fuckin’ A, I believe it!’
    Mingolla was disappointed. ‘Yeah, okay,’ he said.
    ‘You hear what I’m