"Got any questions you wanna ask me?" Dim squinted in the bright sun.

Tariq looked over to the bullet riddled car. "Leaving those dead guys there for a reason?"

"Sergeant thinks the car might be booby-trapped." Dim said non-chalantly.

Tariq never took his eyes off the car. "Yeah, well, he's not so dumb."

"Think he's right?" Dim looked at Tariq.

"Yup."

"How come?"

"They're Syrians. Rich kids. At least by the standards of this shithole anyways." Tariq looked at Dim. "See, rural Iraq is like Appalachia compared to Damascus. These kids went to school and could have had a life."

"Why come here?" Dim asked, disbelief in his voice.

"Jihad, man. Holy war against America. For some of these kids it's like the most exciting thing that's ever happened in their world. Look, it's like being a hippie in 1969 and then hearing about Woodstock. How could you not go, you know?"

"Yeah, but you die here." Dim didn't see the comparison.

Tariq looked at Dim. "Yeah, well, they have a different of what that means then you do."

Dim was impressed. "How you know all this?"

"What? That they're Syrians?"

"Well, yeah, for starters."

"They're wearing white shoes and chinos, man. One of them had a pair of Ray-Bans. It's not...it's not exactly tribal wear."

"Do you think the car might be rigged to blow up?"

"Look, I wouldn't want to have to open that trunk."

Dim ducked behind the sand bags. He looked at Tariq. "Oh, you think I'm chicken?"

Tariq grinned. "No. The thing about these improvised explosive devices, like the one that hit your truck?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, well, they're improvised by people who don't really know what they're doing. I mean, half of them old ladies kids just...blows up in their faces all the time or goes off whenever."

"Put a lot of rounds in that car." Dim pointed out, still squatting behind the sand bags.

"Yeah, wouldn't make a difference if it's C4. I mean, you could hit C4 with a hammer and it won't go off or you could use a cell phone from a mile away and it will."

Dim looked at Tariq. "You wanna tell the Sergeant this?"

Tariq softly laughed. "Me? Ha. Nah. No, man. I'm the new guy, remember?" He sat on the sand bags.

"So you'd rather run the risk of being blown up then running the risk of being wrong in front of the Sergeant?"

Tariq smiled back at Dim. "Yeah, that's about the size of it, yeah."

Dim stared at the wall as that conversation replayed over and over in his head. It was the first time he had ever felt incompetent and stupid. Of course Tariq would have known about that shit. He was Iraqi. He knew. Dim barely blinked.

"Frank?" Vanessa shook his shoulders, but Dim didn't respond. "FRANK!" Vanessa frantically yelled.

Dim looked at her but didn't see her. "Tariq?"

"No, Frank. It's Vanessa." Her eyes filled with tears. How could he see Tariq but not her? She looked deep in his eyes. "Frank, look at me." His eyes stared into hers. "What were you thinking about that made you think of Tariq?"

Dim just looked at her, but he looked through her. He could only see Tariq and what they had gone through in the war.

"I say again, we'll need transportation when we're done, Lieutenant. Over...Negative. Of course not, Rawhide Six. We're not done yet. Out."

"The mom snatched him in." Angel said.

Scream looked up and walked to Angel's side. "You see her?"

"Just her arm."

"Could've been the dad?"

"If he wears a red dress around the house."

"Some of these fundamentalists were robes that look like dresses. Alright, this is the deal." Scream looked at his team. "I want two men watching the village at all times. I want to know who visits who and what they do when they get there. I want to know every thing about this dump that we can possibly know from right here. And I want one man watching the road, too, which means we're going to be short on shut eye for a while." He looked at each member of his team. "Angel, you and Dim are up first on the village. Talk about everything, understand? Verify what you think you're seeing with the other guy. I'll take first watch on this side. Tariq and Smoke, you can alternate on the radio." As he made his way to the side of the bunker where he could see the road, Scream mumbled "I can't imagine a stupider way to do this."

Dim smugly grinned. "I can imagine a stupider way, Sergeant."

Scream looked back at Dim. "Dim, the idea that you might have a real gift for strategic thinking scares the shit out of me."

A couple hours later, Smoke was asleep and Angel and Dim were looking at the village. "It's one quiet town." Dim remarked.

"It is today." Angel replied.

"You mean cause we're here? Think there'd be more activity if we weren't?"

"Think that goat would got fed." Angel kept his scope on the goat that stood by the back door for two hours.

A/N: The italic conversations are from OVER THERE. Thanks go to the OT writers