Then as a soldier started to drop the shell down the tube, Jackson knew that time had not been set.
“Wait—” Jackson said, stepping forward, already realizing that it was too late. “No time!”
The shell disappeared out of the soldiers’ hands.
“Short round!” Leander yelled and everyone along with Jackson hit the ground.
Jackson looked up and saw a soldier stand up and try to pull Green down off the wall.
A great roar and bright flash filled up the night as the shell went off twenty meters out of the tube, the time set on zero. Jackson looked up and saw the soldier who had been trying to pull Green down running across the pit on the stumps of his legs. Green still stood on the wall laughing. The man ran into the sandbag wall and collapsed, lying there screaming with a strange high-pitched wail that made Jackson want to laugh. But instead Jackson threw up.
“We got ’em,” Light’s voice came over the handset.
“More rounds?” Jackson said, spitting to clear his mouth.
“Negative, it was beautiful,” Light said. “Not a whole dink out there.”
Jackson replaced the handset. Leander was kneeling beside the soldier who lay on his back at the base of the sandbag wall screaming for his mother. The sweet scent of blood filled the pit.
One of the men went for a medic.
“Shut up!” Leander screamed at the soldier. “Shut the fuck up!”
The soldier continued to scream. As the men tied tourniquets around the stumps, his screams turned to animal-like groans. Then the groans stopped. Jackson was grateful for that.
“I’m so fucking short,” Green said, still standing on the wall.
The squad ignored him.
“Green’s shorts didn’t do Calvin no good,” a soldier said.
“Light’s bad luck stronger than that man’s shorts,” another said.
“Maybe the major’ll write it up as enemy action so his family can have a medal,” a third said.
Leander stood to one side, looking out toward the ridge.
“I’m sorry—” Jackson began, walking toward him.
“Fucker, you stay away from me. I’m squad leader. I should’ve checked. Williams is fucked up enough when he’s straight. I should’ve known he’d fuck up, I should’ve known,” Leander said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Jackson said.
“Light, you cocksucker!” Leander screamed out toward the ridge. “Sitting out there laughing at us. Put willie peter on that mo’fucker.”
And Leander opened a cardboard tube which contained the mortar shell and began stripping charges off it.
“Be cool,” a soldier said. “You saw what happened to Calvin. Light always brings down the shit on people.”
They wrestled Leander to the ground.
“Get out of here!” one of them yelled to Jackson.
He walked off past the mortar squad tent, large holes torn in the canvas by the shrapnel. At the mortar pits the men were still arguing with Leander over dropping white phosphorus on Light.
Jackson pressed the transmission bar and said, “Tom Light, Tom Light.”
Only white noise hissed out of the handset, but he kept calling.
“Hey, Marcus, your suits are fucked,” a soldier yelled from the tent.
Marcus ran past Jackson. A few seconds later, Jackson saw Marcus and another soldier using a flashlight to look at the suits they had laid out on a cot. Jackson noticed Marcus was wearing a white dress shirt and a lavender tie.
“Goddamn, ruined, all of them,” Marcus said. “I was going to be the best-dressed dude in D.C.”
Marcus stuck his hand through a shrapnel hole.
“Ruined, fucked, wasted,” Marcus continued.
“Least you ain’t dead,” the other said. “I told you to leave ’em at Pleiku.”
“It’s Light. He might as well have come in here himself with a shotgun and blowed ’em full of holes.” Marcus said.
Jackson felt sick again, but when he knelt on the ground with his head down, he found nothing was left in his stomach.
One man dead, he thought. Dinks blown to pieces out at the rock. Marcus worrying about this fucking suits. Tom Light in love with the war.
“I’m going to be short,” Jackson muttered as he walked toward the bunker. “I’m going to be short.”
CHAPTER
13
By the big rock at night, Jackson sat with Tom Light under a poncho they had thrown over themselves, the air rank with the scent of decaying leaves. While Light held a flashlight, Jackson wrote a letter. Jackson had walked out the gate again. Hale would be mad when he returned, but Jackson knew there was nothing the major could do.
“Starlight is fucking up,” Light said after he signed the letter. “You saved my ass. Didn’t know they were coming. Keep seeing the weird shit in it. Don’t need to see the weird shit. I gotta know. You saw it, first day I was here.”
“I didn’t see,” Jackson said.
“I know what you saw,” Light said. “It’s that man the dinks brought in. They call him the Tiger. Works up in the fucking trees. Hard to pin down. He’s the one who blocked the trail. But he ain’t that good. Shit, I can kill him without the starlight.”
“You’ll waste him,” Jackson said. “Easy.”
“Easy?” Light asked.
“Sure.” Jackson said.
Light sighed, an ancient sound, and said, “With the Tiger out there nothing is gonna be easy.”
“You’ll kill him,” Jackson said.
“Maybe he’s like me. Maybe he’s not so easy to kill.”
Jackson sucked in a deep breath at Light’s concern over the enemy sniper.
“You can kill him anytime you want,” Jackson said, forgetting to whisper and listening to the sound of his words echo off the rock.
Light held up his hand for silence.
“I didn’t say I couldn’t do it,” Light said. “Won’t be easy is what I meant.”
Now Jackson felt better, safe again.
“They’re coming in to mortar the firebase tonight,” Light said. “I saw it in the scope. Cover for a probe. It’ll be good hunting. Maybe the Tiger’ll be there.”
“We should tell the TOC,” Jackson said.
“Fuck those base camp soldiers.”
“Hale will have my ass.”
It was scary Light could see the future in the starlight, Jackson thought to himself. But even more scary was that there were times when Light did not know. Tonight he knew, and Jackson felt safe.
Jackson followed Light through the rain forest. They crossed a trail, and Jackson expected they would take it. Instead, Light led him through vegetation so thick Jackson could see only a few feet in front of him. Light disappeared and Jackson froze, feeling the dark jungle close in on him. Light might walk off and leave him. It could happen.
But after what seemed to Jackson like a long time, Light walked back out of the tangle of trees and vines.
“Grab hold of my sweater,” Light whispered. “Move when I do. Don’t make noise.”
With the bottom of Light’s sweater wrapped around his fingers, Jackson followed him through the jungle. Light took a few steps, stood motionless for a time, and then moved forward again. He repeated this hunter’s pattern over and over.
Jackson felt like he had dived into a lake at night. The jungle was not like scrub and small trees of the area around the firebase. Here the big trees shut out the light from the stars and moon. He felt smothered by the darkness and searched for a clear spot in the canopy where he could see the sky again. The leaves were wet from a rain storm earlier that day, the ground soggy under his feet.