“What did he say?” Hale asked the lieutenant.
“Says he’s not killing anymore. Going to sit in his hut until the war is over,” the lieutenant replied.
Light stayed at his hut, and the Tiger continued to harass the firebase. He shot another guard out of the tower, killed two more mortar crewmen, and shot the glass out of a periscope the men were using on the perimeter.
Then Leander, still wearing his pith helmet, asked to see Hale. Hale had him report to the TOC. Leander came alone.
“Ain’t putting my men out on the guns for the Tiger to kill no more,” Leander said.
“You and your men will go to jail,” Hale said.
“Least we’ll be alive in LBJ. You send Jackson out. He’s Light’s main man. He can talk to him. Everything’ll be cool then.”
Jackson took a deep breath.
“Jackson’s getting paid to be my RTO, not to go out in the bush,” Hale said, talking fast. “You think you run this firebase. Think you can give my men orders. Jackson’ll never go out as long as I’m in command.”
“One day you’ll get wasted,” Leander said. “That’ll be how the report’ll read. Major got wasted by the Tiger.”
“Get out of here!” Hale shouted. “Get out of my sight!”
“Yeah, you’re the major,” Leander said. “Long as you’re here we got to do what you say.”
Leander left the TOC.
Jackson wanted to be out in the bush with Light. Any night now the frag would bounce down the steps of the TOC. One of the guards posted at the entrance might do it himself.
Then a navy captain and a lieutenant commander appeared in the TOC. They told Hale they had hitched a ride on a chopper to the firebase to see some of the war. The officers wore stateside fatigues and black baseball caps with gold braid on the bills.
“Nothing much to see here,” Hale said.
“They told us in Pleiku a firefight was usually going on up here,” the captain said.
Hale said, “Rear areas get a distorted picture of us. I can have you choppered over to firebase Mary Lou. Lots of action up there.”
But the captain decided to spend the night. Hale tried to persuade them to change into jungle fatigues along with steel pots and flak jackets, but the captain refused.
“We’re just here to observe,” he said. “We’ll stay out of the way.”
“We’ve got this problem with a sniper. He likes unusual targets. You’re dressed different from the rest of the men. Be safer if I found you some fatigues. Sniper couldn’t tell you from the enlisted men,” Hale said.
The captain said, “No, thanks. We keep our heads down. Watch you kill him.”
When Labouf heard about the naval officers he laughed and said, “Those guys are finished.”
And Jackson agreed.
The captain and the lieutenant commander came back down into the TOC after dark to wait for some action. Labouf waited until Hale was gone then came down to try to sell the officers a look at his map. They laughed and dismissed him as a case of combat fatigue. Labouf went over to the map tripod and began to write something on his map. Jackson was surprised the navy men were still alive. The captain began to grumble that there was nothing going on.
Hale returned and said, “Jackson, call up the mortar squad and have ’em fire some H&I. We’ll go up in the tower and watch.”
They had already left the TOC by the time Jackson got Leander on the land line.
“Not unless a patrol is in trouble,” Leander said.
Jackson sat in front of the radio and waited for Hale to call on the land line from the tower. The telephone buzzed.
“Why aren’t they firing?” Hale asked.
“Leander won’t. Only if a patrol needs support.”
Hale came down from the tower and argued with Leander on the land line. The naval officers were amused.
“That man needs a few months in the brig,” the captain said.
Hale said, “He’ll fire those rounds if I have to hold a pistol to his head.”
They all went up out of the TOC. But no sooner had they cleared the stairway than Hale, the lieutenant commander, and the guard came half-running and half-crawling down the stairs, dragging the body of the captain behind them.
Labouf whispered in Jackson’s ear, “Now you’ll be going out. Some admiral is going to be pissed.”
And Labouf lit the edge of the map with his lighter. He dropped it to the ground where it quickly burned. Labouf rubbed the ashes into the dirt with his boot.
“Got money I can’t spend and no way to make more.”
Not long after the chopper carrying the body of the captain left, General Morton called Hale on the radio.
“Can’t you secure your area from snipers?” Morton said.
Jackson left the radio but stayed close enough to hear.
“The air force wouldn’t give me an arclight,” Hale replied.
Morton said, “You don’t need an arclight for one goddamn sniper. Now the navy is raising hell with me. Some of your men told that lieutenant commander you let a sniper shoot up your camp at will. And what’s this about your mortar section refusing to fight.”
“That’s not true,” Hale said. “My men do what I tell them. We’ve had a problem with a sniper. I’ve had airstrikes. I’ve sent out patrols. If I could have an arclight—”
“Goddammit, Hale, you’re not going to get an arclight unless the enemy is attacking in strength. What you’re going to do is personally take out a patrol and kill that sniper. Major Williams told me he’s had to stop work on the fence. Why wasn’t I told? You’re there to protect the engineers. That’s your only mission. Good God, man, did those navy men see the fence?”
“No, sir, they didn’t,” Hale said.
“You deny it’s there if the navy starts asking questions. What you’re doing is classified, understand. I want results up there. You get me results and there’ll be a good report on you. A promotion. Maybe colonel.”
“I’ll take care of the sniper. We’ll start stringing wire again. You can count on me, Sir.”
Hale hung up the handset and turned to Jackson.
“Get out there, Jackson,” Hale said. “Take Light’s mail to him. Write his letters, talk to him, hold his hand. Make sure he kills the Tiger.”
CHAPTER
16
Jackson was not afraid as he walked through the scrub, breathing smoothly and evenly like a man out for a walk after dinner. In his rucksack he carried .303 ammo, a new walkie-talkie, and a battery for the starlight scope. There were clouds over the mountains. Every day for the past several weeks the clouds had built up, a blue-black cliff of clouds over in Laos, but so far there had been no rain. The monsoon was late, and they all feared its arrival because it would mean a reduction in their air support.
He called Light over and over on the radio to let him know he was coming out but had received no reply.
I’ll be all right, Jackson thought. Probably already knows I’m here. Won’t let the Tiger waste me.
Even though he tried to walk quietly, the dead twigs and grass crackled under his boots. He entered the tree line, moving easily. The jungle had taken on a new character for him, a comfortable order instead of a random arrangement of trees and vines. It was a triple-canopy rain forest, the trees rising in three distinct layers. Walking in it was like being inside a gymnasium, that same hollow feeling. Only the patches of bamboo, the shoots growing closely together, made walking difficult. At any moment he expected Light to step out from behind the buttresses of one of the huge trees.