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told it now. “My mother told me that when she was young phones lost their signal all the time.”
    “It’s okay for you to talk,” the phone said. “
I’ve
been lobotomized.”
    Abdikadir grimaced. “How do you put up with that? I always turn off the sentience circuits. So irritating.”
    Bisesa shrugged. “I know. But that way you lose half the diagnostic functionality.”
    “And you lose a friend for life,” the phone pointed out.
    Abdikadir snorted. “Just don’t start feeling sorry for it. Phones are like Catholic mothers—connoisseurs of guilt.”
    The chopper was buffeted again. The Bird tipped and flew level, over bare ground; they sailed away from the village. “I’m out of low cap,” Casey called. “Too damn difficult to hold.”
    Abdikadir enjoyed a grin of triumph. “Nice to know we’re exploring the outer limits of your competence, Case.”
    “Shove it up your ass,” Casey growled. “This wind’s coming from every which way. And look at the fluctuations in our groundspeed—hey.
What’s that?
” He pointed out of the bubble window at the ground.
    Bisesa leaned forward and peered. Loose vegetation was being scattered by the rotors’ downdraft, revealing something on the ground. She made out a human figure in a hole, holding something—a long black tube—
a weapon.
    They all shouted at once.
    And the sun shifted, like a dipping searchlight, distracting her.
    The chopper had stopped its orbiting and was heading directly toward him, its bubble face dipped slightly, its tail raised. Moallim grinned and tightened his grasp on the RPG. But his heart was thumping, he found, his fingers slippery with sweat, and the dust was getting into his eyes, making him blink. This would be the first important act of his life. If he brought down the chopper he would be an immediate hero, and everybody would applaud him, the fighting men, his mother. And there was a certain girl . . . He must not think of that now, for he still had to do the deed
.
    But now he could see
people
, inside the ugly bubble cockpit of the helicopter. The reality of it suddenly shocked him. Was he really about to snuff out human lives, like squashing bugs?
    The chopper surged over his position, and its downdraft, a mighty punch of air, scattered his flimsy cover. All choices had vanished, save one; he must not hesitate, lest he be killed before he carried out his duty.
    Laughing, he launched the grenade.
    Abdikadir shouted, “RPG! RPG!” Casey hauled on the stick. Bisesa saw a flash, and a smoke trail stitching through the air toward them.
    There was a jolting impact, as if the chopper had run over an invisible speed bump in the sky. Suddenly the cabin noise rose to a roar, and from some split in the hull the wind poured in.
    “Shit,” Casey shouted. “That took a piece out of the tail rotor.”
    When Bisesa looked back that way she could see a tangle of metal, and a fine mist where oil was being lost through a ruptured pipe. The rotor itself was still working, and the chopper flew on. But everything had changed in that instant; battered by the wind and the noise she felt exposed, horribly vulnerable.
    Casey said, “Everything nominal, except oil pressure. And we lost part of our gearbox back there.”
    “We can run without oil for a while,” Abdikadir said.
    “That’s what the manual says. But we’re going to have to turn this bird if we want to get home again.” Casey worked his stick experimentally, as if testing the tolerance of the wounded aircraft; the Bird shuddered and bucked.
    “Tell me what’s going on,” Bisesa muttered.
    “It was an RPG,” Abdikadir said. “Come on, Bisesa, you’ve attended the briefings. Every day is kill-the-Americans day here.”
    “I don’t mean the RPG. I mean
that
.” She pointed out of the window, west the way they were headed, at a reddening, setting sun.
    “It’s just the sun,” Casey said, evidently finding it hard to focus on something outside the cockpit.