I was behind the 240, and he [Thomas] was behind the .50 cal. Both of us were secretly wishing for a reason to make these guns talk. The guns sat lifeless, inanimate tools of death, begging to be brought to life. Do I really want someone to ride by and shoot at us? In the back of my mind I was grateful not to have bullets whizzing past my head. I know what that's like, and as soon as you're in that situation, you begin to imagine a million other places you would rather be. I was beginning to think that a firefight would be a welcome intrusion into my otherwise peaceful, boring day.

I must have been busy with these thoughts because seemingly out of nowhere, like angels sent from heaven, two young boys appeared at the gates, beckoning us with their voices. Where the hell had they come from? Thomas looked up and wondered the same thing. What did they want? One of them waived a piece of paper in his hand as if he was a messenger, anxious to deliver his message. "I'll go see what they want," Thomas said. "Hopefully they won't blow me up." As I held up my hand to signal for them to wait there, I realized that his comment didn't hold the sarcasm that it might have a couple of weeks ago before a boy their age blew himself up outside our FOB, killing four Iraqi soldiers in the process.