Wet, wet, wet, he thought. Rotten with mold. Waiting to eat my body if Light makes a mistake and gets me killed.
Gradually the land rose, and Light began to walk much faster. Jackson kept getting tangled in vines. Then the ground slanted almost straight up, and they pulled themselves up the slope on tree limbs and vines. At the top they crossed a trail, and this time Light took it. After walking on it a few feet, Jackson guessed the reason why. It was a trail made by animals, not men. At several places they crawled along it as the trail tunneled through the underbrush.
When the trail disappeared in a thick stand of bamboo, they forced their way through the narrow places between the shoots. Light stopped and motioned for Jackson to crawl up beside him.
“We wait here,” Light said. “Don’t move. Don’t go to sleep.”
Jackson lay motionless on the soft carpet of dead bamboo leaves. The mosquitoes swarmed about him, his insect repellent long ago sweated off. He thought he could feel leeches crawling on his body under his fatigues.
To Jackson it seemed they lay there for hours. The sounds of the night animals and the H&I fire from the firebase made keeping his eyes open easy. Finally Light tapped him on the shoulder.
“Slow and careful now,” Light said. “Follow me.”
Jackson looked at the luminescent dial of his watch. It was two o’clock. They crawled slowly, the bamboo thicket eventually thinning out. Jackson saw a place ahead where the darkness was not so thick.
Not being afraid was a strange sensation. But what if something happened to Light, if the men Light was going to shoot killed him instead, if the Tiger won his battle with Tom Light? Jackson gulped air.
Light motioned for him to stay. It was hard to see Light move at all, but gradually his dark shape was gone. In ten minutes by Jackson’s watch, Light returned.
“Don’t move, be quiet,” Light again whispered in his ear.
They lay still for a long time, Jackson not daring to raise his head to look at his watch.
I should’ve stayed on my listening post, Jackson thought.
“Move when I move,” Light whispered in his ear.
Jackson kept pace with Light as they crawled across the open space. Light took his time doing it. It felt like they were crawling about a meter an hour. He turned his head and looked up at the stars, no longer feeling smothered by the jungle. Light stopped, motioning for Jackson to crawl up beside him. Then Light offered him the rifle, and Jackson took it.
They were on a hill, the ground falling away before them to form a bowl-shaped depression full of elephant grass covered with patches of a thin, white mist. Jackson hesitated for a moment, afraid of what he might see, but then put his eye to the scope. Along the tree line he saw in the green glow of the starlight a squad of NVA carrying light mortars, some with the tubes and others with the baseplates and shells. Light took the rifle back.
“Lay still, wait until they set up,” Light said.
Jackson took a deep breath, worried about the noise he made as he did it. Sweat ran down his face, and his whole body tingled with fear. He wanted to shout, to jump up and charge the NVA, anything but lie on the ground and wait. Yet at the same time he wished he could burrow underground like a mole to hide. He felt envy for the NVA and their tunnels. Somewhere close by was surely a tunnel, a cave, a place to hide.
Hide, he thought to himself. Hide deep down in the earth.
But hiding was not all right. To run, to hide, was to break the rules. He decided he would lie very still with his face pressed to the ground while Tom Light did the fighting. That was not running and not fighting but something in between. If Light needed him to fight, he would fight.
I hope I fight good, he thought to himself.
Jackson heard something move in the grass below. The sound came closer and breathing hard a soldier walked up the steep slope toward them. Jackson felt Light’s hand on the back of his head as the sniper slowly pressed Jackson’s face to the ground.
Lie still and be like a patch of vines or a rotting log, Jackson thought.
Closer and closer the sound came.
He’s going to step on me, Jackson thought.
Instead of being confused his head was clear, the possibility of the soldier stepping on the middle of his back occupying his entire attention.
I’m not going to be able to move when he does, Jackson thought.
The grass swished against the soldier’s uniform. He was right on top of them now. Jackson wanted to scream but doubted that he could get enough air into his lungs to yell. With teeth clenched, he tried to silently draw air into his burning lungs.
Suddenly the sound stopped. At any moment he expected to feel a knife at his throat. Light might decide to lie still in the darkness and allow the enemy soldier to kill him. A series of rustling sounds came from just beyond his head, only a meter or so away. Then it was quiet. He gradually became conscious of Light moving past him, moving so slowly that as Jackson watched Light with his peripheral vision, he found it hard to be certain Light was moving. But when he saw Light’s foot slide past and disappear, he knew Tom Light was going to kill the enemy soldier.
A faint popping sound came from directly in front of Jackson. The soldier had farted. He smelled the sour stink.
What if the dink decides to take a break from his listening post to beat off, Jackson thought. And what if Light chooses that moment for the kill, lopping it off at the instant of his enemy’s pleasure? Jackson had to try hard to keep from laughing. Crazy, he told himself. You’re as crazy as Tom Light.
Someone sighed like a man might as he sat down in an easy chair after a long day of work. Then there was a faint bubbling sound and the sweet smell of blood like in the mortar pits when the soldier had lost his legs. Light reappeared beside him.
“They’re setting up below,” Light said. “They’ll be making noise and won’t notice us. If they see any movement up here, they’ll think it’s their own security.”
Jackson lifted his head and saw close enough to reach out and touch the body of the NVA soldier. The man lay on his back with his mouth wide open. Even in the dark Jackson could see a dark stain of blood on the front of the man’s uniform.
Had Light taken a trophy? Jackson thought. No way to tell, the man’s lower body hidden by the grass.
Jackson did not want to look too close. He felt a great sense of calm. He was safe out in the bush with Light, safe as he would have been home in bed back in Alabama. Soon Light would teach him all the tricks. Maybe he could become as good as Tom Light.
How would it have felt to have killed the soldier? he thought.
Light had the rifle to his shoulder, lying prone on the ground. Jackson wondered if Light was going to begin killing NVA. Light lowered the rifle.
“Here, look,” he whispered in Jackson’s ear.
Through the scope Jackson watched the soldiers assembling tubes to the baseplates. Others were digging holes in a line along the edge of the field.
“They’ll hide in the pits and then start dropping rounds,” Light whispered. “They’ll get twenty or thirty rounds in the air before the firebase has time to shoot back or send out gunships. Soon as they start dropping rounds down the tubes, I’ll start shooting.”
Light took the rifle, leaving Jackson to stare into the darkness wondering how he was going to shoot what he couldn’t see.
Thonk, thonk, thonk, thonk. Jackson heard the 82-millimeter mortar rounds begin to go out of the tubes. The firing continued, and he heard the crack of the impacts on the firebase. Light’s rifle boomed. Jackson raised his M-16.
“No,” Light whispered. “Watch behind us.”
Jackson stared at the dark mass of jungle while Light continued to shoot. The NVA shot too, and he listened to the pop of the AK-47s. They were firing wild, a burst of automatic fire ripping through the trees high above them.