He’s not real, Jackson thought.
“No one has to die,” the figure said.
Jackson said, “You got lost. I’ll show you how to get back to the firebase.”
“I’m not coming back. I don’t have to fight anymore. No one has to die.”
Pate put out one of his big hands and placed it on Jackson’s shoulder. The hand felt heavy and warm through Jackson’s wet, cold fatigue jacket.
“You tell the major,” Pate said. “You tell them all.”
Pate turned and walked off, disappearing into the night.
Jackson found Light in the hut.
“Are you doing it?”
“What?”
“Raising them.”
“Yes.”
“I saw a man in the jungle. Did you raise him?”
“The big man? Yes.”
“And the dinks?”
“Yes, them too.”
“Where do they go?”
“Up into Laos. To the city. Where there is no war.”
Jackson looked at the dark figure of Light and smelled that jungle stink. Like a skunk, Jackson thought. None of it made sense, but there it was. He had talked with Pate, touched him.
“We’re both crazy, howling at the moon crazy,” Jackson said.
Light laughed and said, “The war is crazy. We’re not. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe.”
Jackson wanted to watch Light do it, watch him touch a man whose guts had been shot out, watch that man get up and walk. But Jackson was afraid to ask.
“Come in, show Hale,” Jackson said. “Men are dying everyday. Show him you can stop it.”
“Tell Hale to leave them in the bush,” Light said. “I’ll raise them.”
“What are you?” Jackson asked.
“Tom Light. Same as always. Son of a fisherman. Born poor, probably’ll die poor.”
“You’re not Him come again?”
Jackson gulped air and waited for Light to reply.
“Why would He want to come back to this?” Light paused before he continued, “The power was in the holy man. Now it’s in me. I don’t know how. You come up to Laos with me.”
“I want to see. There’s no city,” Jackson said.
Light turned on the scope. The big end began to glow with greenish light. There was the smell of electricity in the air. An image took form and Jackson crouched close to the screen. It was the city. Stone temples covered with vines. Soldiers, NVA and American, walking in a grassy parklike place. Women, children, playing on the grass.
I’m hallucinating, Jackson thought to himself. I’m going crazy.
He thought of Loretta, looked for her in the scope. The image faded and the electric smell in the air was replaced with the rotting leaf stink of Light.
Light said, “Nobody has to die.”
“You come up to Laos with me,” Light said.
“I want to go home,” Jackson said, thinking of Loretta, thinking of the hundred days he had left.
“Come with me.”
“No, goddammit, I’m going home.”
“You look again.”
The scope glowed, and Jackson saw mountains and a narrow valley covered with jungle. Then he realized it was Little Tit, Big Tit, and the Cunt. No sign of the fence, everything grown up. Not even a rusted steel post or a piece of wire showing.
“Before long there’s not gonna be a fence or firebases,” Light said. “You come with me.”
Jackson looked in the scope again, the jungle smooth and uniform. Only the chopped-off tops of the mountains indicated that firebases had once been there. He looked for himself in the scope, wished he could know.
“What’s going to happen to me? What if I stay?”
“If it’s not in the scope, I don’t know,” Light said.
Jackson thought of the R&R he had taken with Light to Vung Tau and returned to find Hale’s new RTO had been killed.
“No, I belong at the firebase,” Jackson said, getting the words out all right but gasping for breath after he said it.
Jackson caught his breath and continued, “Remember we have a deal. You keep me covered.”
Light said, “I ain’t forgot. But you saw what was in the scope. You know what’s gonna happen. Come up to Laos with me.”
“I’ll be all right. You keep me alive,” Jackson said.
“You get killed I’ll raise you.”
“Shut the fuck up about that. You keep the dinks from wasting me.”
“I won’t go back on my word.”
Then Jackson left Light at the hut and started back for the firebase. Light had promised, but could he trust a man who claimed he could raise the dead?
What did I see? Was it real? Jackson thought as he walked through the jungle. Alfred Ten-Deer had been real, no doubt about that. But that was not the same as raising the dead. By the time he reached the front gate, Jackson had begun to doubt again. No one had seen Pate die. Maybe he had survived the firefight. Pate’s squad had gone out on a night ambush and vanished. Maybe Tom Light had found Pate and asked him to stay out in the bush.
And Jackson thought about the jungle-covered mountains and valley he had seen in the starlight. Then he considered returning to Light. He paused a moment before he continued to walk toward the firebase through clouds and a steady rain.
CHAPTER
20
The NVA hit Little Tit with a night rocket and sapper attack in the middle of a heavy rainstorm. They breached the wire and ran through the camp tossing satchel charges. The rain and cloud cover made it impossible to call in gunships or fighters. Desolation Row gave them fire support along with the big guns from Firebase Mary Lou, but by morning the sappers had been reinforced by at least a company of NVA. The enemy hit the hill with rockets and mortars and began to push the engineers off. No one could see the battle because the mountaintops were shrouded in clouds.
Finally the engineers abandoned the mountaintop and retreated to the fence. Hale called in an arclight on Little Tit. The next day the air force blasted Little Tit, killing any NVA left on the hill and destroying the firebase.
Major Hale pulled the troops off the fence and assembled the men at the firebase. A gentle rain was falling, and clouds filled the valleys, the firebase like an island in a gray sea.
“Men, we’re leaving this place,” Hale began.
Everyone cheered. Hale waited until they were quiet before he continued.
“The enemy’s been kicking our ass,” Hale said. “Fence is going nowhere. We’ve been using the wrong tactics, that’s all. General Morton has ordered us into Laos.”
“We’re ready, Major,” Raymond shouted. “We’ll waste the dinks.”
Reynolds played his M-16 with his teeth.
Jackson had been in the TOC when the call came through. Hale had protested that he was not ready, that he needed air support, but Morton had given him a direct order, leaving Hale no choice.
Hale took out a plastic-covered map and held it up for the men to see.
“I got air force pictures. If the dinks dig a goddamn new latrine at the Holiday Inn, I know. Dinks won’t be expecting us, sitting over there fat and happy. Intelligence says there’s about the same number of them as us. Thinks we might catch us a general if we’re lucky. Remember, we’ll have the element of surprise.”
“Don’t care how many of us die long as you make fucking colonel,” Leander said, his pith helmet pulled down low over his eyes.
“Leander, you can get yourself plenty of those helmets where we’re going,” Hale said. Then Hale hesitated before he continued, “I didn’t say it would be easy. Better than waiting for them to kill us here. Hiding underground like fucking rats.”
“Fucking crazy,” Leander shouted.
Hale ignored Leander and talked fast, “Men, we’re going out in the jungle and destroy the enemy. The NVA will learn not to fight this unit.”
Light probably gone off to Laos and now Hale deciding to get me killed, Jackson thought.