Summary

As citizens in Lebanon and Isreal alike both turn their eyes toward the 1998 World Cup, soldiers on the Pumpkin begin "executing a series of one-night ambushes on the hilltop directly to the south" (135). Many nights are uneventful, but eventually, a night comes when they spot guerrillas setting up a rocket and they begin to fire against them. They kill two enemy fighters and are greeted back at the Pumpkin like "conquering heroes" (139). Later, they reviewed a videotape of the incident taken from a surveillance post and discover that both guerrillas did in fact survive. They might still be alive today.

Just as Friedman's time at the Pumpkin is drawing to a close, his company is ordered to dispatch a squad north to another outpost, called Red Pepper, for some kind of secret operation. Friedman is among that squad, and at Red...