Still there was nothing. No indications that life stirred in the village.
His arms were growing tired, so he lowered them. He picked up his rifle and stood there as if to give the Americans one last chance to shoot. The tension of not knowing if he’d live or die gave way to boredom.
He turned and headed down the hill. The mines! he remembered, and stopped. The tiny green bombs with their web of deadly legs. Legs Chin would never see in the darkness.
He looked back over his shoulder at the Americans. Chin now almost wished they were there. But all was still quiet. He had only one way off that cold field.
Willing himself onward, he began his slow descent. He grimaced with each crunching footfall. Despite the cold he could feel himself sweating. The scene ran over and over in his mind. A blinding flash of light. A wall of fire. Pain everywhere. Then darkness.
But his boots found only the squeaking snow. The land underneath flattened, and his inner sense told him he’d made it. He began to walk at a more natural pace. By the time he reached the far ridge, the terrors of the night had receded.
Until, that is, he approached the charred remains of the treeline. The air was heavy with the stale smells of a long-dead fire. And the ground was littered with heaps of ash-coated debris. He stumbled every other step, finally strapping his rifle over his shoulder and groping through the obstacles using his hands in place of his eyes. It was nearly impossible to tell what he felt through his thick boots and gloves. He tried his best to shut the thoughts from his mind. But in the blackness of the burnt forest Chin’s senses were alert and alive. And touch was the most intimate of all the senses. The discoveries made in that fashion were not easily shut from his mind.
Chin just tried his best not to fall in that terrible place… among the fallen trees and cratered earth and charred remains.
It had taken almost three days, but Kate and Woody finally managed to talk their way to the front. Their cramped Humvee cruised along the snow-covered road. Its wipers swished the cold, dry snow back and forth. Ice framed the windshield outside the wipers’ reach. Kate searched the endless forests that slid by the fog-coated side windows for some sign that a war was on. She saw nothing. Just a perpetual succession of trees.
‘You want to do the interview now?’ the scrawny lieutenant asked. He twisted around in his front seat. Kate sat in back between Woody and a young soldier. The sullen private held a large bag in his lap that Kate guessed normally occupied her seat.
‘Here?’ Kate asked. Woody cleared his throat. ‘Yeah!’ Kate blurted out. ‘Sure! Great idea.’
Woody unzipped his camera bag. Kate reached into her backpack for a stick mike. Kate stole a glance at the soldier beside her. His breath had fogged the side window as he stared off into space.
Woody frowned at Kate. ‘Batteries won’t last long in the cold,’ he reminded her for the hundredth time.
‘Then use the special battery saver,’ she said. Woody squinted — not getting it. ‘The battery saver, Woody!’ She reached up and turned the camera off. The red taping light went out.
The lieutenant was watching. ‘It cuts off all unnecessary electrical… things,’ Kate said. She flashed him a smile. He blushed and looked away. The soldier beside her was smiling.
She cleared her throat. ‘Testing, one, two, three, testing,’ she said into the dead stick mike. ‘Ready?’ The lieutenant quickly combed his hair with his fingers and nodded. She had him state his name, rank, and serial number, and identify the unit that he commanded. She dipped the microphone toward him and back. She then had him go through a brief description of his unit’s responsibilities.
‘Are you getting all of this?’ he asked. Kate realized she’d left the mike beneath her mouth.
‘Oh, it’s a special, multi-directional microphone. Latest stuff. You getting all this, Woody?’
‘Yep.’ He squinted into the dark viewfinder. He reeked of pot smoke. His clothes were saturated with the odor.
Kate was still looking for tanks or burning hulks or shell craters or something. ‘So, how often do you deliver the mail?’
As the lieutenant went through his spiel, Kate caught the soldier beside her watching them. His head lay against the window. He was onto them.
She realized the officer had finished. ‘And you go right up to the battle lines to deliver the mail?’
‘If we have to, ma’am. ’Course, the unit we’re delivering to today hasn’t seen any combat yet.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ he shrugged, ‘the Chinese haven’t gotten here yet. They’re coming, but they’re still a ways off. Maybe a few more days.’
‘Shit!’ Kate said. She dropped the mike into her lap.
‘I couldn’t take you up to the front if there was fighting, ma’am. It wouldn’t be safe.’
Woody lowered the camera, replaced all the lens caps and closed up the control panels. ‘Fuck!’ Kate cursed. The soldier beside her was grinning. She shook her head at her incredible misfortune.
The reporter and cameraman followed Andre Faulk on his rounds. They interviewed soldiers about their feelings on the eve of battle. The quiet woods were filling with snow. It drifted through the dense trees and piled onto the thick blanket already there. The only sounds were the crunching of their feet and the occasionally profane outburst of the woman reporter.
‘I can’t fucking believe it!’ she went on and on and on. Andre walked in front — lugging the bag which grew lighter with each stop. The woman was short but very pretty, the cameraman older and with a ponytail. They both trailed some paces behind and acted like Andre wasn’t there. The lieutenant had gone on to the next battalion to deliver the mail in his own heavy bag. He was doing the job of the private whom he’d displaced to get his face on TV.
Andre saw the round white helmets sticking up out of the snow holes ahead. The woman and the long-haired guy bickered about why they had come there. Whose idea it was. What to do next. He paused to hoist his rifle sling and bag higher on his shoulder. The reporters walked around him, not paying attention to where they were headed. He watched in amazement at their stupidity. ‘They’s mines up there!’ he yelled.
The conversation and the two newspeople both halted. They looked back over their shoulders without turning. Andre headed off in the right direction — approaching the positions from the rear. The two civilians waited till he had passed, and then stayed in his tracks. Andre let the self-satisfied grin curl his mouth. They ain’t so Goddamn smart.
‘Ma-ail call!’ he heard shouted — as always well before he arrived. As always, by the time he put the bag on the ground, there were a dozen men gathered around him.
‘What platoon is this?’ Andre asked. They all looked at the camera crew but kept their places around Andre.
‘Third platoon, Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion,’ someone called out. Andre remembered them from the barracks. He remembered listening to the sounds of fighting over the radio. He began to call out their names. ‘Aguire!’ He ran the envelope under his nose. ‘Mm-uhm! Smell go-o-od, Aguire!’ The soldier snapped the pink envelope out of Andre’s hands. He brushed it with his mittens. ‘Alvarez!’ Andre pulled the package out of the bag like Santa Claus. He raised and lowered it to judge its heft. ‘I delivered one o’ these yest’day. It’s one o’ them inflatable rubber dolls, ain’t it?’ There was laughter as the package was handed to Alvarez. Each man whose hands touched it took turns looking at the package as if Andre’s joke had been something more than pure bullshit.