I pull the fragrant arms of the bandana around my head and tie it off back there behind my skull, where thought transmutes into action. The pressure on my temple is welcome. My skin is slick with sweat, gray hair shapeless with grime, but my eyes are alive with purpose. It has been many years since they looked that way. But that is how I see them now, reflected in the murky pool of water at my feet. Behind me the sun is going down. The cries of birds and monkeys maintain a constant chatter, a chorus of sound oblivious to the distant pops of gunfire.

I lift the rifle off the ground and sling it over my shoulder, two magazines duct-taped together in reverse directions to ensure a fast switch during combat. More magazines bulge in my backpack, along with binoculars, flashlight, and some random supplies.

The others are already walking back to the trail. Ramone calls to me cheerfully and I nod. The march begins again.

Somewhere there is a large house where my wife frets. Somewhere the people I called friends wonder at my fate. Somewhere my dog whines softly.

Somewhere is not here. Here is a valley about ten miles long, the sides sweeping down dramatically in a lush surge of foliage. At one end is a village. At the other end is a military camp.

This is as simple as it gets. Beyond this valley is a country at war, and a world beyond clucking its tongue at the sight. But I don't care about the world, or even the country. The larger struggle no longer matters. I've put my blinders on and all I see is the valley, this rich landscape of life and heat and water.

Onto the trail now with the rest. My feet hurt--these boots are new. I was in the army for a few years before college, and marched plenty, but that's decades ago. I'm a pudgy sixty-two-year-old man now, out of shape, but as I sweat beneath the swelter it feels like the years are pouring off me. I shake my head and drops of perspiration go flying off: there goes third grade, that one's fifth semester of college, and there's the night I was elected to congress. My life dampens the soil, collects on the leaves of jungle foliage, runs down my back.

The rifle is light on my shoulder. It's a plastic and metal AK-47. I'd never fired one before coming here, but I learned about them in the army. For a weapon created by a Communist state, it's surprisingly democratic. Dr. Kalishnikov designed the AK to be so simple to operate and to clean that illiterate Russian peasants could use them under the worst conditions. He succeeded admirably. Under the years of Soviet sovereignty, more AK rifles were made than any other firearm in the history of humanity. They spread out from the factories of Russia and were replicated and manufactured by nearly every Soviet state, millions upon millions of these weapons traveling around the world packed in factory grease or hidden in suitcases or tossed in the backs of banana trucks by twelve-year-old freedom fighters waving goodbye to their sisters. In Albania and fifty other caustic zones you can buy one on the streets for a handful of American dollars; they are so plentiful and so pervasive that in some transactions they replace currency altogether. You can buy food with AKs. You can buy trucks with AKs. They are even superior to money in this regard because when you don't have enough AKs to buy what you need, you can use the AKs to take it instead. The name itself sounds like money: AK, Aykay, it goes right in there with the Euro and the Yen. If a stockbroker could count all the AKs in the world, he could determine the market capitalization of insurrection. The AK has been employed by proponents of almost every minority ideology on Earth. It is the physical expression of the will to fight, the unmistakable icon of impassioned resistance, the incarnation of violence.

Manny nudges me as we walk. When I look at him he shakes his head, gestures to his eyes and then to the trees around us. I know what he means. I'm lost in thought again. I have to stay sharp, keep alert.

Duck and cover.

The sun has set and darkness is on the valley. The twilight chorus has changed, as the diurnal cycle brings different creatures to voice. Then a new voice rises.

Machine guns. Their blazing cry lacerates the jungle. Manny pulls me down because I am tired and slow and fat and old. I fumble with the rifle, get the strap off my shoulder, bring it to bear, flick off the safety, finger on the trigger, and I start sighting on the darkness. Around me men and women, some of them boys and girls, crouch and fire and yell. There are flashes of light all around me and tremendous, deafening sound, and the light and the sound is returned from the troops in the darkness. I swivel slightly, get a good sight picture on one of the flashes, and squeeze the trigger. The rifle erupts with a short burst. I can't tell if I've hit anything. We are shooting at each other in the dark.

Our leader, Ramone, barks something and we pull back into the vegetation, scurrying over the uneven ground and firing sporadically. I pop off three more bursts as I haul myself along with the others. I see two of our group lying in the trail. I can hear them whimpering but it's distant; gunfire nearly deafens you and everything gets hushed in your ears. They might be screaming. It's so soft I can't tell.

My wife must be very angry with me. I can imagine her on television, her tear-stained but grimly taut face captured by CNN during an event of some sort. It would bother me more if I still loved her.

Dawn, and we're done with the march. In the last six weeks I have discovered reserves of willpower that I had thought long lost. I read a biography of LBJ years ago, and was struck by his inhuman endurance on the campaign trail. Days without sleep, a constant stream of coffee and cigarettes. When he smoked he'd sit down in a chair, knees splayed apart, and lean forward like he was going to puke. Then he'd take great gouts of smoke into his lungs, hold it there, let it swirl around some before exhaling again. I don't smoke. But I invoke his name like a Catholic saint, begging for his strength in the day ahead.

The military camp is below us. During the night we've made the difficult ascent up the eastern valley wall. Here the smell is rotting fruit and the fresh scent of dead men. At the crest we found a handful of guards, mostly dozing. Ramone sent two men in with knives to kill the sentries, then the rest of us moved in with bayonets and killed the sleeping soldiers. Empty liquor bottles and well-worn porn magazines dotted the makeshift watch point--emblems of the decadent West.

Manny and I took one of the guards. We folded out the bayonets on our rifles and stood to either side of a sleeping man who looked to be about twenty. He looked comfortable. I wondered what he was dreaming about. Then Ramone made a clicking sound and we all drove our weapons home. Manny took the throat, and I the heart. We did it well. The man in the uniform gurgled blood and air from his wounds, struggling to get up but pinned to the ground by our bayonets and our booted feet. It was a terrible, terrible way to die. Even so, some had it worse. One soldier managed to get up, spraying blood from a cut artery, and staggered around while our men jabbed him with bayonets like he was a bull in Spain. He wheezed and gushed, then fell to his knees. Someone drew a machete and cut his head off to quiet laughter. Now the high ground was ours.

Before I walked out on my job I would have been shocked and saddened by this scene. Or at least, I would have been shocked and saddened while the cameras were rolling. I gave up really caring quite a while ago, or so I thought. I've managed to give a damn again, about one simple thing: this valley. They will not take this valley.

Ramone gives an order and we start setting up our mortars. We're going to shell the troops down below. I help Manny as best I can; I don't know much about operating these things. Ramone does calculations and tells us where to aim.

We're sort of on the buddy system. Ramone told Manny to show me the ropes, to keep me alive. Now I take a shell from its container and hand it over carefully. Manny finishes setting the target and we wait for a few others to catch up. Then Ramone, watching the camp through his binoculars, gives the signal. Manny drops the shell into the tube, we lean away with our hands over our ears, and then the fireworks erupt. A volley of a dozen shells go arcing up into the sky. We stand up quickly and gather around Ramone. Moments later, the darkened camp below erupts in a spectacle of light and sound.

The carnage looks immense. The government must have had five hundred troops there, a staging ground for forays against the insurgents of the valley. Now many of those troops lie dead, or run screaming and on fire. Caches of ammunition go up, trucks erupt and blow themselves off the ground, dozens of rifles turning into grenades as the cartridges inside them touch off. The weapons of oppression turn against their masters, metal maws biting the hands that fed them bullets.

A low cheer goes up among Ramone's squad. We'd launch another volley if we had any more shells, but you do what you can with what you have. If this keeps up, we'll be down to rocks and spears soon.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. There was supposed to be money from Congress to help the freedom fighters. But the bill never got out of committee. The polls were against it. So they steal what they can, take what they must, and fight always.

I once believed that governments existed to coalesce the will of the people into useful law, and to enforce that law. But my experience taught me different: a government exists to perpetuate the wealth and the prestige of those who staff it. Changes in government happen only when people outside are hungry enough to claw their way to the table, but those changes are irrelevant. Politics is a game of musical chairs performed on the nightly news. The number of players never gets any larger and the audience is bored.

Afternoon, and we pick through the remains of the camp. Six other squads have moved in. We spent the middle part of the day hunting down and shooting survivors. Now we're all here looking for food and ammunition. Not a lot survived. Our squads move quickly, searching still-smoking corpses for valuables. We're all on the same side, but scavenge opportunities like this are mostly first-come, first-served. Occasional arguments erupt between members of different squads over some choice discovery, but the leaders resolve this with a laugh and a dirty joke. They're good, Ramone and his counterparts. They never forget that we're all here because we want to be, because this is our valley, our home, even if it's an adopted one.

Someone produces a can of spray paint. We pass it around, writing insults on the sides of heat-blistered jeeps and leaving the initials of our organization on bodies. It feels good to mark our territory this way. Some even actualize this to the extent of pissing on the dead. Manny jokes that they are putting out the fires.

It's no use, I think to myself. The whole world is on fire.

Evening again. Our squads have dispersed once more. There will be reprisals, and it's time for us to leave the valley for a while. We'll go lie low someplace, let other units take up the slack, get refreshed and come back in a couple of weeks to fight again. Or maybe we'll go to a different valley, a different village. They're all the same to me, eventually. I fight for what they tell me, grateful to have a constituency who has a use for me.

We've been playing cards but it's almost time to go to sleep. I wander off into the trees a little ways to take a crap. About the time I'm finishing up, a quiet voice comes from the darkness nearby:

"Sir?"

I freeze. They've caught me, quite literally, with my pants down. I can't possibly pick up my rifle in time to do any good. Besides, there's something else: the voice is American. I can guess what's up.

So I stand up slowly and pull up my pants. Get them fastened. Movement nearby and again:

"Sir?"

Not looking at the source. I'm preoccupied with my belt. "What is it, son?"

"I can take you back, sir. Right now. Just walk with me and we'll be out of here before they know you're gone."

I turn around slowly. He looks to be in his forties, lean and focused. He's wearing unmarked jungle clothes, his face painted black and green. No insignia. Deniable.

"I'm not leaving," I say softly. "I already left. I'm here now."

"We can go," he insists, his words measured like he's explaining himself to someone who barely knows his language. "Your wife, your son. They're at the embassy. Your dog, sir. We can go. Your dog."

I smile and shake my head. "Tell them I'm dead."

He looks into my eyes for a moment. I see something there I'm not expecting. Envy. Then he shakes his head. "I'll check back in a week or two, sir."

"Whatever you like, son."

He melts back into the night, but not before he salutes me. I return the salute.

Then I take up my rifle and go back to our camp. We play cards a little longer until we call it a day and I stretch out under the stars.

When I was a boy, I would go camping with my father. We'd have long conversations about history and politics, lying there in the dark and gazing at the universe, an ocean of possibility before us. He told me I could be President someday, if only I was willing to fight for it.

He was right. But there are better things to fight for.