Light pointed up into the tree, but Jackson could not even find the limb in the green tangle.
“Got him a bamboo platform built in the fork,” Light continued. “I got the trap set on the platform. We’ll see the branches move when he comes across on one of them Tyrolean traverses of his. Climb right over the trip wire. Won’t see it. Be watching us. Think we fucked up, lying out here in the open.”
Jackson did not like lying on his back, presenting his face as a clear target to the Tiger. A breeze stirred the leaves high up in the tree. Then Jackson thought he heard something moving in the tree-top but decided it was only a bird. He looked for the rope, but could not find it. It probably ran across to the next big tree thirty yards away, their canopies interlocking. Once the Tiger had come across he would be almost directly on top of them, the bamboo no longer providing cover.
They waited. It was like squirrel hunting, only he did not have to worry about remaining motionless. They were the target, the bait. It was all right to move. Already it seemed like they had lain there for hours. Jackson listened to the sound of his own breathing, which to his surprise was smooth and steady.
The branches shook, no bird this time, but perhaps a monkey. Then Jackson heard the creak of ropes. He looked up into the canopy but could see nothing except the branches moving. Light waited, watching.
Don’t let him find the wire, Jackson thought.
Jackson imagined at that moment the Tiger was getting ready to place one of those heavy, steel-jacketed bullets between his eyes. He looked at Light who still had his eyes fixed on the treetop.
Maybe he’s going to let him shoot me, Jackson thought. But no, Light had it all figured out. The Tiger was finished. Surely the sack was filled with frags, the trip wire tied to a pinless frag resting inside a C-ration can, just waiting for the Tiger to hit the wire and pull it out. Yes, that was it, the sack was filled with frags.
Jackson sucked in great gulps of air, trying not to make noise when he did it. Trip it, trip it now, Jackson thought. He imagined the sack hidden in the leaves over the bamboo platform. It was a good trap except for the decoy part. The Tiger would not escape.
Light looked at him and smiled.
Jackson thought about running, wondered what his chances would be. The next good cover was the trunk of the other huge tree, but he would have to run across thirty yards of open space, an easy target for the Tiger who might not even know they were there. Jackson concentrated on remaining very still.
The Tiger screamed. Jackson threw his hands over his head and pressed his face into the leaves to protect himself from the shrapnel. But there was no explosion. The Tiger came crashing down through the canopy. Light got up, and Jackson followed him.
A few feet from the body, Light stopped. Jackson started to walk past him to get a better look at the Tiger, who lay face down in the leaves, but Light put out his arm and stopped him.
“Careful now,” Light said.
Then Jackson saw it: long and green and thick as his arm in the middle, uncoiling itself from around the Tiger’s neck. It glided away, disappearing into a clump of bamboo, green vanishing into green. Light turned the Tiger over, a man who was a little more stocky than was usual for the slender Vietnamese. The Tiger’s neck and the side of his face were black and swollen.
“Face’ll be blowed up as big as a watermelon and black as tar once the poison starts working good,” Light said. “Had that bamboo viper hung on a bootlace and tied to a piece of bamboo laid across a forked branch. He hit the wire, pulled the bamboo off the branch. Snake dropped right on him.”
“You’re the best,” Jackson said to Light, feeling like he was yelling “Amen!” with the people at home in church.
Thunder rumbled, and a gust of wind shook the canopy.
“Rains’ll come soon. Hale won’t have it so easy,” said Light. “Don’t worry. I’ll be out here looking after you.”
With Light in the lead, they moved down the ridge toward the hut. The thunder was closer now, and the sun had been swallowed up by the clouds, making it seem like twilight beneath the trees. Jackson was relieved that Tom Light the killer was back. No more spooks in the starlight scope, no more talk of going off over into Laos to live in lost cities.
Light led him back to the hut. Jackson sat on the ground exhausted. He looked at the toe of his boot where the bullet had made a groove in the sole.
“You take the starlight,” Light said.
Jackson gasped for breath.
“I don’t want it,” Jackson said. “What would I do with it?”
“You keep it for me.”
“You’ll need it.”
“I got the Tiger without it. They don’t have nobody better than him.”
Light put the scope in Jackson’s hands.
“You ain’t seeing the weird shit in it. You’ll be all right.”
Maybe it would be good to get Light away from the scope, Jackson thought. He didn’t want Light to go crazy.
“We still got a deal?”
“Yeah, you write my letters. I’ll keep you covered.”
“I’ll bring it to you when you want it back.”
“Don’t come ’ less I call. I ain’t killing no more. Dinks’ll be moving out here. I got to know you’re coming or they’ll waste you.”
Jackson put the starlight in his ruck and headed through the jungle toward the firebase. He wished he had not taken the starlight, which made a heavy lump in the bottom of his ruck.
CHAPTER
17
Before Jackson reached the firebase rain began to fall, the start of the northeast monsoon. He walked back through thick clouds that had dropped down over the mountain.
Jackson reported to Hale in the TOC.
“Light wasted the Tiger,” Jackson said.
“Patrol reported the shooting. How come it took him so many shots? Thought Light was a good sniper,” Hale said. “Where’s the body?”
“Left him out in the bush.”
“He won’t get credit for that kill. Unless I see bodies, he won’t go on R&R again.”
Jackson wondered what Hale would say if he told him the reason Light had given up the starlight scope.
Hale went to work on his maps, and Jackson put his ruck under his cot. Then he squeezed the water out of his fatigues. It had been cold out in the bush, and he was still shivering. Labouf was asleep on his cot, having just come off a shift on the big radio. Jackson thought about waking up Labouf and telling him that he had Light’s starlight, but decided against it. Labouf would probably want to start selling looks at it.
When Jackson lay down to sleep, every time he closed his eyes he thought of the weird things Light claimed he had seen through the starlight.
Light’s going fucking bush happy, Jackson thought. Been out there too long.
But still he could not sleep. He got the starlight out of his ruck and, hiding it from the radio operator under his poncho, went out of the TOC. The rain had let up but the wind still blew steadily, bending the radio antennas on the TOC. Jackson climbed up on the sandbags.
He turned on the scope and looked at the camp. Everything seemed to be working all right. The bunkers were surrounded by sparkles of green light, and the raindrops made flashes across the scope. Jackson watched a soldier walk in from a bunker on the perimeter.
But when he turned the scope on the ammo bunker, he sucked in one deep breath and began to choke. On top of the bunker a tiny skeleton jumped about on the sandbags, waving its arms in the air.
“What the fuck,” he muttered as he put down the scope and gasped for breath. Then he brought himself under control thinking, goddamn “fish on the bank.”
But the tiny skeleton was still there, dancing frantically atop the bunker. Then the skeleton, its bones glowing in the dark, disappeared into the bunker. The spook had been much too small for a man, reminding Jackson of those glow-in-the-dark cardboard skeletons people put up during Halloween, except that this one had a tail.