Julian alternated with the sergeant as point man. He carried the M-16, his favorite weapon. Flick the selector on AUTO and press the trigger and you could empty the eighteen-round magazine in something like a second. Of course, that wasn’t the usual way you did it, particularly when firing at a definite target. The thing was to press the trigger lightly, a mere flick and then release it, which gave you a burst of three or four rounds.
Sergeant Teichert carried a CAR-15, his own favorite. Behind him Forry Jackson had an M-16 with an over-and-under grenade launcher attached to it. Next came another grunt rifleman and behind him a crew of three men with an M-60 belt-fed machine gun.
The center file was the safest if they ran into an ambush—and in this jungle a hidden Charlie could be as little as ten feet from you without being detected until he started firing. It would most likely be the right or left flank that got it first.
The sergeant, an old combat buddy, had protested Julian’s taking the lead, although he usually did.
“Fer Chrissakes, sir, you’re the captain. You give the orders. Send us grunts in. We lose you and we don’t have no officer.”
“I don’t like to send a man in where I’m afraid to go myself.”
“You just got out of the hospital for doing that, sir.”
“That’s enough, Sergeant. Let’s go. I’ll take the first hour of walking point, then you can take it.”
“Yes sir.”
The sergeant was a good man. Like Sergeant Karp, he was a veteran of Korea, as well as two hitches here in ’Nam.
Now Julian said to Siu Priu, one of the three Vietnamese assigned to the company as interpreters, “You three stick to the center of the column. You’re not expendable. I don’t know why in the hell Saigon doesn’t set up some schools to teach more of you Vietnamese English. We could cooperate better.”
“Yis, sor,” Siu Priu said.
“That’s English?” Sergeant Teichert demanded. “Some interpreter.” He didn’t like gooks, not even those on the American side, and didn’t go to the bother of disguising the fact.
Marking your way through the jungle was slow work, particularly when you knew that Charlie was in the vicinity. They had a nasty habit of sinking Bouncing Bettys into the ground. You stepped on one and the initial charge bounced it up about four or five feet, and then it blew frags in all directions. The irony of it was that they were American-made mines, either captured from the Americans, or bought by the Viet Cong from South Vietnamese who would sometimes sell a part, or all, of their equipment when in need of a wad of Military Payment Certificates, the money of the ’Nam war.
They plowed on through, Julian alternating with the sergeant as point, watching the ground immediately before their feet, darting looks into the trees and brush to either side.
Suddenly, just as they had started up a low hill, the jungle erupted into a G ötterdammerung of sounds. Tracers reached out at them—green tracers, Charlie’s tracers. To the right, a RPG rocket-propelled grenade went off. Julian didn’t know if it was the enemy’s or their own. He was down on one knee, behind a tree. He fired and fired into the jungle.
Teichert went down suddenly some twenty meters ahead, yelling, “Medic! Oh Christ, Medic!”
Julian looked back over his shoulder. There was a lot of firing going on but the only man he could spot was Forry Jackson, calmly launching grenade after grenade in the direction of Charlie.
He dropped his gun and rucksack and, crouching low, ran for his wounded sergeant. Lead and steel were flicking through the leaves of the trees like bees, thudding when they struck the trunks.
He got to Teichert, and dropped down on his knees.
“Get me out of here, Captain,” the other wheezed, his face ghost-pale. “I’m hit bad.”
Julian couid see that he had taken three hits in the stomach. Where the hell was a medic? Teichert was bleeding all over the place. He fumbled for his first aid kit and pressure bandages.
And that was when he took his own hits. It must have been a grenade, although he hadn’t heard it.
He stared down at his upper leg, at a purple spot welling larger and larger. He could feel the wound pulsing. An artery: he could bleed to death in minutes.
He started hobbling down the trail, holding his hand over the wound.
Behind him, Sergeant Teichert called weakly, “Don’t leave me…”
He came to the tree where he had left his gun and rucksack, and sank down, afraid to go further for fear that movement would increase the bleeding.
Not far down the trail he could hear the M-60 chattering. The men had got it set up in short order.
“Medic!” he screamed. “Goddammit, Medic!”
One came hurrying up. He slapped a pressure bandage and a tourniquet on Julian’s leg and said, “You’re all right.”
“Teichert’s up the trail. Belly wounds. Hurry, for shit’s sake!”
The medic ran. When he came back, he said, “He’s dead. If I got to him just a minute sooner…”
It was there the dream ended and Julian woke up, sweat-drenched as usual, the memory flooding through him: Teichert bleeding to death while his own comparatively minor wounds occupied the medic’s time; deserting his combat buddy, alone on the trail, to save his own skin…
When he had recovered, they gave him a promotion and awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross. The citation read that he had gallantly led his men into combat against serious odds; that when one of his men fell he had gone into enemy fire to rescue him.
That’s what the citation said, but he knew better, and he told the psychiatrist so.
The doctor looked at him speculatively. It was their third session. He said, “You did what you could.”
“No I didn’t.”
“If you had remained, you might both have died.”
Julian just shook his head.
“How many times have you been seriously wounded?”
“Three.”
The psychiatrist looked down at the papers on his desk. He took a deep breath and reached for his pen.
“Major, I am recommending that you be discharged and returned to the States.”
Chapter Seven
The Year 2, New Calendar
To waste, to destroy, our natural resources. To skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.
Julian had been so upset by his Vietnamese nightmare that he had skipped breakfast and taken himself to the Leete apartment down the hall. He found the doctor standing at the window, looking out over the university campus, his face thoughtful. Edith was sitting at the desk, a stylo in hand, making notes.
She looked up at his entrance, smiled and said, “Good morning, Jule.”
He crossed to her. “What are you up to? I thought you always made notes into the International Data Banks.”
“Oh, I’ve just been doing some planning for my vacation next year. I’ve never been to Egypt before.”
“Egypt? I never liked the place, particularly the Egyptians. How long do you have?”
“A year. I’m going to help build the pyramid.”
He looked at her blankly. “Build the pyramid? What pyramid?”
“Cheops. Archaeology and history students and, well, buffs are going to do a complete replica of the original pyramid of Cheops.”
“Cheops! That’s the largest of them all!”