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  A single M-14 started firing and then a light machine gun joined it. The air was filled with the sound of exploding RPGs—rifle-propelled grenades—and AK-47s. The Marines fought hard and formed a small perimeter on the east side of the lager site. All of their AMTRACKs were burning. One of the fighting vehicles on the edge of the perimeter exploded, sending up a column of fire. A burning body that no one saw was thrown clear of the vehicle.

  The gunnery sergeant fired his M-14 expertly, without any sign of panicking; he located a camouflaged target, aimed, and fired. He was taking a large total of NVA soldiers. He reloaded a magazine, looked around the area for wounded Marines, and saw his lance corporal attaching his bayonet to the stud on his weapon. The sergeant smiled; a battle Marine had been born.

  Thirty-one Marines had escaped from the NVA assault and had formed up about five hundred meters to the east of the night lager site. All of the AMTRACKs had been lost to RPGs. The infantry sergeant’s eyes reflected his shock at the quick battle. There hadn’t even been enough time to remove one of the backpack radios from inside the command AMTRACK. They were without any means of communication and the NVA were still very close.

  “What do you think we should do?” The infantry Marine look over at the engineer gunny.

  “E and E … escape and evade…” He smiled. “There still are enough Marines here to kick a lot of ass!” The gunny pointed to the east. “We can make it back to Lang Vei and men get reenforced so we can come back and get our wounded and dead.”

  The infantry sergeant hadn’t even thought of coming back to the site. “You’re right … let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  The NVA commander stood smiling in the center of the burning AMTRACKs. He had won a complete victory. The monsoon arriving when it had was a perfect cover for the last couple hundred meters of their assault on the American camp. He had struck with two of his companies and the force had been overwhelming. Five Marine AMTRACKs were burning and his men were lining up the Marine dead for him to view.

  A lieutenant approached the NVA lieutenant colonel and reported that there were eleven American dead and no American wounded or prisoners. He smiled and gave the lieutenant an order in rapid Vietnamese. The young officer nodded his head and obeyed.

  The North Vietnamese left the burning vehicles behind after searching the area for anything they could use. The battalion slipped back across the river into Laos as quietly as it had crossed the night before.

  The skull’s hollow eyes looked out at the wreckage and saw nothing. Eleven naked Marines hung from the lower branches of the trees by the commo wire wrapped around their ankles. A jungle breeze made the bodies sway lightly back and forth.

  A tiny puddle of rain water that had accumulated in a dent on the top of the skull broke free and ran down the front of the white face, where the water found a crevice next to the nose cavity and eye. The effect made the skull look as if it was crying.

  The wasp flew down close to the various forms of thick vegetation that covered the jungle floor, instinctively knowing what she was hunting for under the large dead leaves on the ground and under the loose bark of the fallen trees…

  CHAPTER TWO

  Five-Card Stud

  The bright sunlight reflected off the worn places on the disassembled M-60 light machine gun that lay on the camouflaged poncho liner. Sergeant Woods rubbed the cleaning fluid off the charging handle and placed it back down on the nylon cloth in sequence, so that reassembling the weapon would be easier (not that he couldn’t assemble the weapon blindfolded). Old habits were hard to break.

  “It’s almost a lost cause trying to keep those weapons clean…” The recon team sergeant stuck his head up through the roof of the fighting bunker.

  “Hello, Arnason.” Woods felt a little uncomfortable calling the sergeant by his last name. Arnason had been his team sergeant since he had first arrived in Vietnam as a private first class. The first six months of his tour had flown by, but the second six months looked as if there was no end in sight.

  “How does it feel being promoted into the ranks of the noncommissioned officers corps?” Arnason pulled himself upward. He could feel the heat against the palms of his hands as he lifted himself through the small hole onto the roof.

  “Good, I guess … it’s only been two days.” Woods picked up the barrel and held one end up to the light so that he could see down it.

  Arnason lifted a piece of C-ration cardboard off the sandbag seat and sat down on the warm sandbags. “Mail call.” He handed Woods a small bundle of letters. “You got one from Spence.”

  “Really!” Woods laid the machine gun barrel down and took the letters. “I wonder how he’s doing back at Walter Reed.”

  “He’s probably screwing half the nurses on a regular basis, using that old ‘feel sorry for the POW’ line of bullshit.”

  “I don’t know about them, but I damn sure felt sorry for him.”

  “I’m kidding, David! Shit, don’t forget that I was there too when we rescued him and the Air Force colonel.”

  “Yeah…” Woods shoved the letters in the side pocket of his tiger fatigues.

  “I’ve heard rumors that the brigade commander is going to make us stop wearing Special Forces tiger suits and go back to the regular Army issue stuff.”

  “First they try to take away our CAR-15s because they’re not a regular issue item yet, which translates into ‘the staff officers haven’t got them yet,’ and now our clothes!” Woods ran a patch down the barrel and checked it again to make sure it was spotless. “Damn! Why don’t they leave us alone and let us do our jobs!”

  “Hey, Sergeant … welcome to the real world of Army politics!” Arnason smiled one of his rare grins. “But there is a little hope for us. The MACV commanding general loves us and I don’t think anybody is going to push the Recon Company of the First Brigade too damn far … our record is pretty damn good!”

  Woods started assembling the machine gun. He looked up and talked to Arnason while his hands flashed over the parts. “Have you heard anything about us getting a new company commander?”

  “Yep, a West Pointer.” Arnason handed Woods the pin that finished the assembly. “A black West Point captain.”

  “Oh shit!” Woods racked the charging lever and checked again to make sure the assembly was complete, an unnecessary but automatic act. “I hope we’re not going to have to go through all that racial shit again. James was enough!”

  “From what I’ve heard he is a real straight shooter, and that came from Shaw, who has a lot to worry about when he gets a commander who checks the books.”

  “When is someone going to bust Shaw?”

  “He’s small potatoes, David. The CID only go after black marketeers who pull in a couple million dollars a year, not Shaw.”

  “How much money do you think he’s making?” Woods laid the assembled weapon near the hole in the roof and folded a corner of the poncho liner over it to keep the red dust off.

  “A couple hundred thousand, maybe more.”

  “Don’t you think that’s wrong?”

  Arnason’s face turned red. “Of course I do!”

  “Then why don’t you do something about it?” Woods slipped down through the hole into the dark bunker.

  “Why don’t you?” Arnason handed the machine gun down to Woods.

  “I just might someday.” Woods locked the M-60 on the tripod mounted on a stack of sandbags. In front of the gun a narrow slit overlooked the perimeter of the large An Khe base camp for the First Cavalry Division.

  “Do you know something more about Shaw than just black-marketing?” Arnason’s voice made a statement along with the question.

  Woods placed the first round from the belt of ammo in the grooved receiver and closed the lid on the weapon. “I just might.”

  “You’ve been saying that you might do a lot of things!” Arnason left the fighting bunker through the rear entrance. He was angered by Woods’s implication that he didn’t care if Shaw black-marketed the
unit’s supplies as long as he got what he wanted. Woods should know better, after what they had been through as a team.

  Arnason paused in the doorway and called back over his shoulder, “We’ve got a couple of replacements due in today. I want you to meet them up at the orderly room and bring them back here … before anyone can pump their heads full of shit!” Arnason didn’t wait for an answer and stormed away across the open area between the perimeter and the infantry company hooches.

  Woods covered the M-60 with an old lightweight poncho and then laid his hands on the butt of the stock, where he rested his chin and looked out of the narrow slit at the dark green jungle three hundred meters away. He felt like shit, especially after talking to Arnason like that. He knew there wasn’t a better, more honest NCO than Arnason.

  He didn’t know how much time passed as he leaned against the machine gun and thought about home and the war. He reached down and felt the bundle of letters in his side pocket and his thoughts drifted to Spencer Barnett. He missed him. Barnett was the best teammate a recon man could want. He could almost visualize Barnett’s face when they had rescued him from the North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp in Laos. Woods inhaled a deep lungful of cool bunker air and held it in. He had etched forever in his mind that look Barnett had when they found him buried up to his neck in a grave with the Montagnard boy’s body underneath him in the loose soil; Barnett’s eyes had said that they didn’t care anymore.

  A volley of artillery rounds whistled over the bunker. David looked down at his watch and saw that it was six o’clock; the nightly harassment and interdiction fires had started. He pressed his lips tightly together and picked up his CAR-15 and ammo belt before leaving the bunker. He paused long enough to wake up the clerk who was helping pull guard duty until they had gotten their replacements. “I’ll be back to relieve you shortly. I’ve got to pick up some new men.”

  “Man, that’s good shit!” The clerk sat up on the built-in cot against the wall. “I don’t think I could take many more days of this puritan bullshit!”

  Woods left the fighting bunker. He smiled over the clerk’s reference to puritan. Arnason was strict about not smoking inside the bunker and enforced a strict no dope policy. The clerk was one of the heavier drug users in the company, and the first sergeant had assigned him temporarily to Arnason’s bunker as a last-ditch effort to straighten the young soldier out. It had worked partially, but everyone knew that he would go back to using dope as soon as he got away from Arnason.

  * * *

  The recon company first sergeant left the small office at the rear of the converted hooch and walked swiftly over the worn unpainted plywood floor to where his clerks waited for his return. He glanced at the two men and nodded his head. “He wants all of the junior officers and NCOs assembled for a meeting right after supper … seven o’clock.” The first sergeant nodded toward the door. “Go tell them.”

  Arnason stepped back to let the clerks out of the building and then entered before the screen door could slam shut. “What’s their hurry, First Sergeant?”

  “The new commander wants to see all of us after chow, nineteen hundred hours.”

  “Where?”

  “In here. Spread the word if you see any of the NCOs.”

  “What about the poker game tonight?”

  “Postponed until after the meeting.” The senior sergeant turned halfway around so that he was facing the thin plywood wall that separated them from the captain, who was sitting behind the small desk. “I don’t think he’s the type of officer that wastes words.” The compliment was also a strong hint not to spend all night talking.

  The captain smiled. He realized the first sergeant was trying tactfully to warn him about speech making to seasoned troops. There would be a phase where he would have to prove himself, especially to the recon troops. He had no doubt that he would win their confidence. Leadership was his forte and he knew it. West Point had taught him an important lesson about carrying chips on his shoulder. He had entered that school blaming whites for everything: his lack of secondary education, his family’s poverty, prejudice, and even for his being black. The school didn’t tolerate any of his games, and he nearly failed the first semester until they put him in a room with a cadet from the deep South. He learned quickly that prejudice wasn’t solely a white man’s trait as the southern black cadet preached pure hate. He decided then and there that he was going to accept responsibility for his actions, neither hating nor liking a person based on the color of their skin. He had developed into a very professional career soldier, and his present philosophy was that he accepted whites, period, and neither hated nor liked them. They were just there, and he dealt with them solely on a professional level. Three years serving in the Army had shown him that he was good, better than good; he was a very good officer. He knew his business and had received the very highest marks on every single efficiency report he had ever received.

  The voices of the new replacements drew the captain over to the back of his office. He could watch the men without being seen standing in the dark office. His company had taken a large number of casualties during the recent Ia Drang Valley battle and was slowly regaining its strength with replacements from the Special Forces RECONDO School in Nha Trang. He respected his predecessor for establishing a policy of accepting only school-trained replacements for the special company. It would have been very easy to have taken regular soldiers from the line units and turned them into recon men, but the death toll would always be high as they learned their trade in the field.

  “Do you think this outfit is going to see a lot of fighting?” A small, boyish-looking replacement spoke to the taller man sitting next to him on his duffel bag.

  The tall man shrugged his shoulders and curled his upper lip back before speaking in a low voice that carried a heavy Polish accent. “I don’t give a fuck if we fight every day. I came here to fight.”

  “Are you fucking crazy?” The boyish face wrinkled in disgust. “You’re not one of those fucking nuts that likes to cut up dead people, are you?”

  A look of pure contempt filled the Polish soldier’s eyes as he contemplated honoring the little soldier with an answer. He used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat off his upper lip and then spoke very slowly so that his accent wouldn’t strangle his words. “I don’t cut up dead people … I make people dead.” He spat on the dry ground. “I am a warrior, not a coward.”

  The captain listened and caught the soldier’s use of the word warrior. It was unusual and he made a mental note.

  “Yeah … well I came here to get some fucking medals that I plan on using for pussy chips when I get back home.” The small soldier stood and hiked up his pants. “Those rich bitches are going to beg for this recon man’s giant cock!”

  The Polish soldier raised his eyebrows and then dropped them. He could see the boy needed a lot of help.

  “WARNER! … SANCHEZ! … KOSKI!…” Woods flipped through the orders the first sergeant had given him. “Fall out over here!”

  The three replacements picked up their gear and walked over to where Sergeant Woods was standing, next to the company orderly room.

  “You’ve been assigned to Staff Sergeant Arnason’s recon team. I’m the assistant team leader.” Woods looked at each one of the men, trying to detect any major character flaws as soon as he could. “Have you all eaten?”

  The three men nodded their heads and the small soldier spoke for all of them. “We ate as soon as we arrived.”

  “Good. I’ll show you where we live and then I have to get back here for a meeting with our new CO.” Woods looked down at the baggage and noticed that the smallest replacement had the most to carry. “We’ve got a ways to walk. You might want to make two trips.”

  “I’ll help him.” The thick accent was apparent.

  Woods liked the man’s attitude and willingness to help. “Are you Polish?”

  The look Koski gave him was one that warned Woods ethnic jokes weren’t going to be very popular. “V
ery Polish.”

  “From where?”

  “Hamtramck, Michigan.”

  “Where are you from, Sanchez?” Woods spoke to the Mexican. He noticed that the man had a pachuco cross tattooed in the crook of his left hand, between his thumb and forefinger, with a half-dozen marks tattooed above the cross.

  “Everywhere, man … We are migrant workers.” The soldier hefted his duffel bag easily on his shoulder and started walking down the company street in the direction Woods had been facing. “We pick cherries in Michigan during the summer and work our way south to Florida for the winter.”

  “And you?” Woods nodded at the smallest of the three.

  “Warner … Sergeant … you can call me Warner and I live in a place called Bloomfield Hills—”

  “Bloomfield Hills!” Koski dropped the large nylon bag he was carrying in the red dust. “Carry your own fucking stuff!” The big Pole hurried to catch up to Sanchez.

  Woods shook his head from side to side and smiled. It wasn’t working out very well so far. “What was that all about?” He picked up the dropped luggage and noticed that the pair walking in front of them were about to pass the turnoff to the bunker. “Turn right and go down to the bunker on the perimeter! The big fighting bunker,” he shouted.

  Warner pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I should have kept my fucking mouth shut. As soon as he said he was from Hamtramck, I should have known!”

  “You’ve lost me … clue me in.” Woods walked next to the small soldier, who struggled with the duffel bag.

  “Bloomfield Hills and Hamtramck are both a part of the Detroit metropolitan area…”

  “So? That should make the two of you friends and not cause a scene like that back there.”

  “The opposite ends of the socioeconomic metro area, if you know what I mean.”

  “You mean he’s from the rich side of town?” Woods grinned.

  “Yeah!” Warner was beginning to like the sergeant. “If that was true, it would be a lot easier. Look, Sarge … I would really appreciate it if we could keep this our little secret. I really mean it.”