Jackson had gone to sleep on the cot when he heard something rattling. He opened his eyes and saw Reynolds & Raymond sitting on Labouf’s footlocker. Labouf was not at the big radio or on his cot. The radio operator on duty sat with his feet up on the table and his bush hat pulled down over his eyes. Asleep.
“Where’s Labouf?” Jackson asked.
“Gone,” Raymond said.
Reynolds played with the chain on the locker and examined one of the locks. Jackson wondered if he could pick it.
“How did you get in here?” Jackson asked.
“Guard’s stoned,” Raymond said. “Raymond played him a little ‘Purple Haze,’ on his ’sixteen and he said drive on.”
Jackson said, “Hale’ll be down here anytime.”
“Up in the tower,” Raymond said. “Labouf’s with him.”
Reynolds tugged at the lock.
“Leave that alone,” Jackson said.
Reynolds began to beat out a frantic rhythm on the top of the locker.
“Alabama, when you going out to Tom Light?” Raymond asked.
“Don’t know,” Jackson said.
“We want to talk to him.”
“You know where he lives.”
“There’s dinks out there. We’ll be safe if we go with you.”
“You’d get wasted.”
“Tom Light can bring back Jimi.”
“You don’t really believe that shit?” “The slopes believe it. Light can do it. Does it with his starlight.”
“Light wastes dinks with it. Don’t raise anybody.”
“That’s not what we heard. Yards say he can do it. Dinks in Vung Tau say he can do it.”
“You heard a bunch of fucking lies.”
“He can do it.”
“You’re as stupid as the fucking dinks. Get out of here!”
Reynolds stopped beating on the footlocker. He picked up his M-16 and began to play it.
“Never saw so many locks,” Raymond said, tugging at one of the padlocks. “You got the key?”
“No,” Jackson said. “You better leave that alone. Labouf said he’d kill anyone who fucks with it.”
Raymond whistled and dropped the lock.
“Labouf got drugs in here?”
“Just letters. Personal stuff.”
“Think he’d let us watch him open it?”
“Shit, no.”
“You ask him, Alabama. Tell the money man we’ll help him guard it.”
“He’s no money man. Get off that locker. Don’t come down here again. You do, I’ll personally kick your ass.”
They stood up and Jackson pushed the footlocker back under the cot. They would be back, and when they killed Labouf to get his money, they might kill him too.
“Tell the money man we’ll come again,” Raymond said as they left the TOC. “Can’t hide the smell of money.”
CHAPTER
12
Jackson, sitting with the radio on the TOC’s overhead cover, heard the pop of enemy AK-47 rifle fire from the ridge and saw green tracers shoot up into the night sky. He wondered if a patrol had been ambushed by the NVA.
“Jackson, you there?” the words came out of the handset, hissed instead of spoken.
Jackson gulped air. “It’s me.”
“I’m on the rock,” Light said. “They got me cornered.”
Now a light machine gun was firing in short bursts.
“I’ll call Major Hale,” Jackson said.
Light spoke quickly, “No, you get ’em on the guns quick. Fire on my position.”
“We’ll kill you too,” Jackson said.
“My position, quick!” Light said.
A long burst of green tracers came from above the rock and an explosion which sounded to Jackson like a frag.
“Your position?” Jackson said.
Light did not reply.
Jackson slid off the bunker and ran for the mortar pits.
The mortar squad lived in a tent ten meters away from the nearest gun pit.
Jackson yelled into the tent, “Fire mission!”
“Shit, man,” a voice came out of a darkness which was lit only by a single candle. “FDC ain’t called from the TOC.”
“He didn’t call fire direction control,” Jackson said. “He called me.”
They were all stoned. He could smell it.
“They’ll kill him!” he yelled, now inside the tent, wondering how these men were going to save Light.
“Fuck it — oh, I’m so fucking short,” a soldier moaned. He lay sprawled face down on a cot, so stoned he could barely talk.
“Five fucking days,” the soldier continued.
“We’ll catch Green’s shorts,” a soldier said.
The stoned men of the mortar squad began to giggle, all except Leander who wore his pith helmet pushed back on his head.
“Who you talking about?” Leander asked.
“Light, they’ll kill him!” Jackson said.
Leander laughed and said, “Nobody’ll kill that fucker. I told you stay away from us.”
“Go — the rock — come on!” Jackson said, pulling one of the giggling men to his feet. “Get out there or I’ll kill you!”
For the first time Jackson noticed the man was dressed in a suit with wide lapels and bell-bottomed trousers.
“Hey dude, don’t mess with my threads,” the man said. And then to Leander, “Light’s bro gonna bring down the bad shit on us.”
Jackson realized the soldier had probably been to Hong Kong on R&R and was showing off his new, custom-made suit to the squad. Three other suits hung from a rope stretched across the top of the tent, the suits encased in clear plastic bags.
Leander leaped across the tent and pushed Jackson up against the sandbags stacked along the wall. Jackson felt the point of a bayonet at his throat.
“Fucker, I’m gonna kill your goddamn honky ass!” Leander said.
“My position, quick,” Light’s voice came out of the handset, no longer whispered but strong and urgent.
Everyone on the squad heard it. Leander lowered the bayonet.
“They’ll kill him — come on — the guns!” Jackson said.
Led by Leander, the squad ran out of the tent for the pits. The men began carrying ammo up from a bunker.
“Where?” Leander said.
“The rock, on the ridge,” Jackson said.
Leander called fire direction control on the land line, and in a few seconds he had a setting for the gunsight and a number for the charges which he yelled to his gunners. As one man sighted the gun on the candy-striped aiming, stakes, the men were cutting charges, pulling off the thin white squares of TNT stacked at the base of each shell like a deck of cards.
“Tom Light, Tom Light,” Jackson said into the handset.
From the ridge came a long burst from the light machine gun, followed by the heavy crack of Light’s .303.
“Tell that fucker to keep his head down,” Leander yelled at Jackson.
“Tom Light, rounds on the way,” Jackson said into the handset.
Leander checked the sight and gave the signal for the other guns to start firing.
Men began dropping shells down the tubes, and Jackson counted fifteen shells in the air. They waited for the first impact, seeing the flash on the ridge, followed a few seconds later by the crack of the high explosive. Then the others were falling.
“Add fifty,” Light’s calm voice came out of the handset.
Fifteen more shells went out.
“Left, Twenty-five,” Light said.
The guns fired. Jackson noticed Green standing atop one of the sandbag walls that surrounded the mortar pit.
“Five days,” Green yelled. “Tom Light I’ll fuck your sister.”
And Green, stoned out of his mind, continued to laugh and yell from the top of the wall.
“Add one hundred, airburst, they’re running,” Light said.
“Set ’em for six seconds,” Leander yelled.
Again the gunners sighted the tubes and cut the charges. A gunner set a timer on the nose of each shell which would set off a charge to explode it before it hit the ground, spraying shrapnel downward. The soldier worked quickly, and Jackson thought the man missed one. As the crewmen began dropping the shells down the tube, Jackson watched the shell the soldier had not touched.