I’m not afraid, Jackson thought to himself.
He smiled as he flattened himself against the ground. Light would kill them all. As long as no one saw the muzzle flashes of Light’s rifle, they would be all right.
Light stopped shooting. Jackson had counted ten shots and guessed that ten enemy were dead. The mortaring had stopped.
“Move slow,” Light whispered. “Don’t make noise.”
He followed Light into the big trees, Light moving much faster than when they had approached the field. Once inside the canopy Light stopped.
“You did good,” Light said.
“Thanks,” Jackson said.
“They ran.”
“The probe?”
“Finished. No cover for it now.”
Light made a faint popping sound with his lips to show what little chance the probe had now.
“Was the Tiger there?” Jackson asked.
“No, but he’s close,” Light said. “I can feel him.”
Jackson gulped air at the thought of the Tiger, who was almost as good as Light.
Going back, they walked instead of crawling. When they crossed a trail, Light took it.
Light knew, Jackson thought. Light was crazy, but he knew when it was safe and would keep him alive.
Jackson felt excited watching Light kill the NVA. It was almost as if he had been pulling the trigger himself, the kills his as much as Light’s.
Suddenly the jungle around them was torn apart by a huge sound. Jackson felt a pressure wave roll over him and things small and hissing rushed past his head. A machine gun began firing at them off to Jackson’s right, the muzzle flashes barely visible through the thick cover, the bullets popping and snapping as they hit leaves and branches. Jackson felt himself falling, not really conscious that he had willed himself to fall, and pressed his body close to the wet clay of the trail, listening to the whine of bullets over his head. Boom, click, click; boom, click, click. He heard Light shooting the rifle and working the action to chamber another round. Jackson raised his head and through the smoke left from the explosions saw Light, who was still standing on the trail, fire one final shot into the jungle. A man screamed. In return there was a single shot that went between Jackson and Light, making a ripping sound in the air as it passed. Jackson knew it was one of the heavy steel-jacketed bullets like the ones Light used. Then it was quiet. Jackson wondered if he had been hit somewhere, hit so bad that there was no pain for the present. Sometimes that happened to soldiers.
“They’re running,” Light said, kneeling beside him. “You, OK?”
Jackson felt his body carefully, first his balls, then head and stomach and arms and legs.
“I’m alive,” Jackson said. “What was it?”
“Claymores,” Light said. “Two or three. Rigged up with trip wires. Starlight didn’t fuck up. It was me. My fault for walking the trail. I know better.”
Jackson remembered about claymore mines from infantry training and tried to recall just how many steel pellets each mine contained. Six or seven hundred he thought, maybe a thousand.
My rifle, Jackson thought.
His rifle was gone, and he remembered that something had torn it out of his hands when the claymores went off. Down on his hands and knees, he searched for it in the darkness until with relief he felt the barrel with his fingertips. But when he picked it up, he discovered that the claymore pellets had shredded the plastic stock. Jackson began to shake, his whole body trembling. Light was alive and he was alive. How?
“I hit three of them,” Light said. “Did you hear the Tiger’s big gun?”
“What?” Jackson said, not hearing all of Light’s words, still running his shaking fingers over the place where the stock had been joined to the receiver.
“His big gun.”
“The Tiger?”
“Yeah. Maybe he’s using a Chinese night scope or a captured starlight. Only way he could’ve pinned me down at the rock that night. Only way he could have come so close tonight. But tonight I knew he was there. Had his chance and missed. I’ll kill him soon.”
“How did the claymores miss?” Jackson asked, forcing the words out with difficulty and choking as he spoke. “How did the machine gun miss?”
Light said, “I was here.”
“We should be dead,” Jackson said, hoping Light would not notice the shaking. At any moment he expected his teeth to start chattering.
Then Light’s hand was on his arm, the fingers strong and steady. Jackson stopped shaking as Light pulled him to his feet.
“No dink ambush is ever going to kill me,” Light said.
For the first time since he had arrived in country, Jackson was certain he was going to survive the war.
Light can do fucking anything, he thought to himself. I’m going to live.
CHAPTER
14
Light began killing NVA. Patrols found the bodies out in the bush, not mutilated this time, all with a single bullet hole in the head. Soon attacks on the fence almost stopped. Wire was being strung, and Hale was in a good mood. Jackson no longer saw him working at the map tripod, plotting his attack on the Holiday Inn.
Jackson was in the TOC. Labouf had just come on duty for his shift on the big radio, and Hale was talking with II Corps about progress on the fence.
“Goddamn, but Tom Light is one fine sniper,” Hale said switching off the mike.
“I’d be charging Two Corps a hundred dollars a head if I was Light,” Labouf said.
“He going to stay out there until he’s run every one of them back over into Laos,” Hale said.
Labouf leaned far back in his chair and said, “Yeah, in a few weeks it’ll be just like stateside.”
During the days that followed Light continued to kill the enemy and the engineers strung wire in the Cunt. For Jackson it was a good time. He lounged about on the sandbags during the day and thought of boarding the plane that was going to take him home to Loretta.
Then Reynolds & Raymond quit shadowing Labouf.
“Alabama, you seen R&R?” Labouf asked Jackson.
“No.”
“I liked it better when I knew where they were,” Labouf said.
The next time Jackson saw Reynolds & Raymond was when he came out of the TOC one evening just before sunset. They were standing under the tower with so many cloth bandoleers for M-16 magazines slung across their chests they couldn’t lower their arms. Clusters of frags were hooked to their web gear. Raymond wore a K-Bar fighting knife on his belt along with a bayonet, and Reynolds carried several LAWs slung over his shoulder.
“Expecting trouble?” Jackson asked. “Gonna shoot those LAW rockets at NVA tanks?”
Raymond said, “No. Sappers.”
They both fidgeted nervously, shifting their weight from one foot to the other. Reynolds played his M-16.
“The dinks got a tunnel,” Raymond continued, talking very fast. “Can put your ear to the ground and hear ’em digging. When they dig through, we’ll be waiting. Been hunting those dink tunnel diggers all over ’Nam. About time we’d get ready to waste them, we’d get shipped out. Been to Cheo Reo, Dak To, Bong Son, An Nhon, Song Cau, Tuy Hoa, An Khe, Kontum. Jesus, there’s no place in fucking Two Corps where the dinks don’t have a tunnel. Seriously, this motherfucking country will collapse one day. They got it undermined. Careless fuckers. Don’t keep the tunnels shored up. Shipped us out to Dak To last time. Said this place was the end of the line. We like it fine. Right, buddy?”
Raymond patted Reynolds on the shoulder. Reynolds giggled.
“We’re tunnel rats,” Raymond continued. “Cong killers, dink destroyers, gook greasers.”
“Where’re they digging?” Jackson asked.