The sand got into everything, and the HMMWV's were by no means airtight. On the floor board by the pedals there was a small collection of it, a pool of sand, and there seemed to be a thin layer on all of the surfaces. It was in his boots, between the soul and his socks, and in his socks, between his skin and the fabric. He felt the sand, whether it was there or not, always. It covered his skin, coated him. Sometimes he thought that his skin had become sand, that who he was and this world he was in was held together by it. The sand of the desert.

He was driving the lead HMMWV in the convoy, navigating the armored truck down the wide highway, going from nowhere, to nowhere, by way of nowhere. But somewhere out in all of this nowhere there were supposedly bad guys, that's what the intel said, so they kept moving.

He turned and looked at the junior officer in the shotgun seat. "Hey LT, how much further?"

The Lieutenant shook his head. "Jesus Christ, Cobin, you sound like my damn eight-year-old son. We'll get there when we damn well get there," he said before resuming his passive scanning of the horizon.

Sergeant First Class Cobin rolled his eyes and turned all of his attention back on the road ahead. The new Lieutenant had some gall alright, but he also had balls to come and sit in the lead truck and not hide out somewhere in the middle of the convoy, and Cobin respected that. For the most part Cobin like Lieutenant Grossman, but all new LT's always seemed to have this need to throw their weight around whenever they first got to Group, and Cobin figured it was about time that Grossman started acting less like a boss and more like a leader.

"Hey, Stamps!" Cobin said, knocking on the roof of the HMMWV. "You see anything?"

"Naw," Stamps yelled from above him in the turret gunner's position, "I think I see goat at about ten-o'clock though, can I shoot it?"

"Fuck no you can't shoot it, Stamps!"

"Roger, sergeant." The noise of the HMMWV was too loud to hear Stamps sigh in disappointment, but Cobin knew it was there.

Stamps was the other new guy in the ODA, a brand new Sergeant straight off the street and into the Special Forces. The 18X program had allowed people with no military experience to jump right into some of the most elite units in the United States military. It was maybe mid-way through this deployment, and Cobin still doubted the new batch of 18X soldiers that had come into his Army, but Stamps seemed like a good kid, if a bit immature at times.

"So LT," Cobin said, "in the briefing that the Major gave he said this was a capture mission, what's the unofficial line?"

The LT sighed, "Realistically, this guy we're going after isn't a huge player, just a mid-level warlord with some connections. Any useful information he has will be on his cell phone, so if it looks like he's getting away, go ahead and pop him. I'll cover you guys from the bureaucrats back at the FOB if we end up bringing this guy back in a body bag."

"Roger, sir." And that's what Cobin liked about Grossman, he was a no-bullshit officer. A rare find in this day and age.

Cobin looked at his watch, time for a roll call. He grabbed the handset for the radio off the dash of the truck and brought it to where the speaker was on the outside of his pro-mask. "Chaos-One, this is Chaos-One-Alpha, all vehicles check in, in descending order, over."

The radio squawked on and off as every vehicle in the convoy radioed in their status all the way down the line. "Chaos-One-Alpha, this is Chaos-One-Bravo, green, over…" and so on.

When the roll call was over all that was left to do was stare out into the waist of this desert and pray that someone starts shooting soon so the boredom will finally be relieved.

Then it happened.

"Sergeant!" Stamps yelled from the radio tower, "I got something, a couple hundred yards down the road!"

"Roger, Stamps." Cobin said, squinting through the heat haze to try and see what Stamps was talking about. It very quickly came into view. A parked vehicle, by the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere. Cobin grabbed for the radio again. "Chaos-One, this is Chaos-One-Alpha, all vehicles halt, possible IED." Cobin moved his foot from the gas to the break and brought the HMMWV to a stop.

Grossman grunted, "Fuck, alright, you know the drill. Lets set up a perimeter."

Grossman moved for the door latch, but Cobin grabbed his shoulder. "Sir, at least allow your men to get into position before you step out of the vehicle and expose yourself. I won't be able talk my way out of it if you come back in a body bag."

Grossman nodded and lowered his hand. Within seconds, several soldiers from the vehicles behind them had moved up and took firing positions in front of the lead truck. Cobin removed his hand from the LT's shoulder and nodded. Grossman, seeming impatient, shoved the door of the HMMWV open and stepped out with his rifle at the high-ready. Cobin and Stamps, as the driver and gunner respectively, would remain in the vehicle for the time being.

Cobin scanned the road and land before him as the other soldiers went about their procedures and set up the permitter. The camera feeding into his visor from the outside of his pro mask was clear enough, but totally restricted his peripheral vision. The new protective masks, or "pro-masks," doubled as light facial armor as well as NVGs and infrared goggles. In Cobin's opinion, all the tech that was built into them wasn't enough to compensate for the fact that he couldn't see if a guy was coming for him from his nine or three o'clock, and if he had the choice he wouldn't wear it, but intel said there was like a 17% possibility of chemical based weapons, so the pro-masks went on.

Cobin sighed, he wasn't going to be doing much but sitting here for a minute so he took the liberty of closing his eyes, taking a three or four second blink to imagine something other than dust and sand and dead insurgents in nothing but rags for clothes. And it was in this moment that he figured out the vehicle up ahead was a decoy. He came to this understanding just a millisecond after the IED that had buried in the sand directly behind where his vehicle had come to a halt detonated, sending his HMMWV tumbling forward into the air. It was a several second tumble-dryer of pain as his body bounced around in the driver's seat, and everything had already gone black by the time the truck stopped moving.

It was dark, too dark to see. But Cobin could feel his body, splayed out. There was no pain now, just a tingling sensation in the darkness. Slowly, starting at his fingertips and his toes, he felt himself dissolve, turn into the sand that he loathed so much. From the outside-in he crumbled away into nothing, into the dark. The sand consumed him like a virus, and he just layed paralyzed in horror as felt himself disappear from the world. This feeling continued until all that was left was his eyes. The sand came for his eyes, too. But then…

But then…

He woke up.