“We’ll all get fucking wasted,” a soldier shouted.
And another said, “I’m staying here.”
The officers and NCOs went into the ranks to quiet the men.
“You will all go. You engineers are infantry now,” Hale said, talking fast. “This firebase will cease to exist. We’re not leaving a single goddamn C-ration can for the enemy to use. This mountain-top will be evacuated and bombed.”
“I ain’t going,” someone yelled.
“Only way you men will get home is by way of the goddamn Holiday Inn,” Hale said. “Next man opens his fucking mouth gets a court martial. You hear me, Leander?”
“Kill him now!” Leander shouted. “Kill the motherfucker.”
Two members of the mortar squad wrestled Leander to the ground.
Hale continued, talking so fast now it was hard to understand him, “Tear down the bunkers. Fill ’em in. Rip up the wire. Pull down the tower. Leave nothing for the enemy.”
Hale glanced up and down the ranks to see if anyone was going to challenge him.
Leander struggled with the men who held him. One held a bush hat over Leander’s mouth. Jackson wished they would let Leander go so he could kill Hale, save them all.
“We’re walking to Laos,” Hale went on, calmer now but still talking fast. “No choppers to let the enemy know exactly where we are. Slip up on ’em. Won’t build bunkers. Won’t dig foxholes. No flak jackets or steel pots to slow us down. Leander’ll be right at home with his fucking dink helmet.” Leander tried to yell something but still had a mouthful of bush hat. Hale continued, “By the time we reach the Holiday Inn, you men will be jungle soldiers. Learn to live and fight like the enemy. Be better than the fucking dinks.”
Hale dismissed the battalion. Jackson found Labouf in the TOC sitting on his cot staring at the footlocker.
“What am I going to do with it?” Labouf asked, speaking in a whisper so the man at the big radio could not overhear.
“Send it to Saigon with one of the crew chiefs,” Jackson said.
“They can’t walk into the Bank of America with American dollars,” Labouf said. “I was planning on sending it home on a ship as hold baggage.”
They both stared at the locker.
“Maybe bury it,” Labouf continued. “But if we lose the war the North Vietnamese will never let me come back here. Arclight’ll blow it to pieces.”
“You have to take the chance.”
“Yeah, no way to hump this money. No room in my ruck.”
In the morning, the footlocker was gone. Jackson did not want to know where Labouf had buried it.
They tore down the bunkers, emptied the sandbags, and used the dirt to fill in the holes. Even the piss tubes were dug up. A sky crane appeared during a break in the weather and removed the tower and the wire. They poured diesel fuel on the wood and sandbag covers and burned them.
The morning they left, Hale wandered about the firebase pointing out things the men had missed, like an empty sandbag cover or a set of rusty hinges off a mortar shell box. By the time the job was completed and the battalion walked off the mountaintop, nothing was left of the firebase but a field of red clay gullied by the endless rain, the filled-in bunkers marked by pools of water.
Jackson and Labouf stood looking at the muddy pool where the ammo bunker had been.
“Swimming pools for the dinks,” Labouf said. “They’ll like it here.”
Leander walked up to them. Hale had busted him to private and put another man in his place.
“Labouf, folks’ll be wanting their money back,” Leander said. “Tom Light’s still sitting in his hut. Bet he ain’t going to Laos.”
“He’s going,” Jackson said.
Leander laughed. “Glad I won’t have to listen to no more crazy talk. Your man’s shit is weak.”
Leander walked off to help take down the mortars.
“Let me know how it feels humping tubes and baseplates over the mountains,” Labouf yelled. “Maybe some slope’ll put another hole in your fucking dink helmet.”
But Leander did not turn around.
“He’s out there,” Jackson said, wishing the tower was still there so he could climb it and try to see Light’s hut through the clouds and rain.
“Maybe,” Labouf said.
“Dinks still won’t give up their dead. They know he’s there.”
“Nobody’s getting their fucking money back.”
Tom Light, you better be out there, Jackson thought. Risked my ass to write your letters. Can’t run out on me now.
The battalion marched past the fence in the Cunt, walking across the scrub toward the trees. Clouds filled the narrow valley and heavy rain fell, the worst weather the monsoon had brought so far. Even in the open it was difficult for Jackson to see the man in front of him.
In his ruck Jackson carried the radio, six batteries, six canteens, M-16 magazines, flares, smoke grenades, and three days’ rations. He staggered under the load which felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, the straps cutting into his shoulders.
I had it made, Jackson thought. Light was my ticket home. Crazy goddamn bastard. Should’ve gone to the city with him.
He started to choke, his mouth wide open as he sucked in great gulps of air.
“Swallow a bug, Alabama?” a voice asked.
Jackson looked up and saw Labouf grinning at him. Labouf had been given the job of carrying an extra radio and spare batteries. His rucksack bulged with the load. He, like Jackson, was supposed to stick close to Hale.
Labouf continued, “We’re fucked for sure this time.”
Suddenly there was an explosion off to their right, followed by rifle fire and the chatter of a light machine gun, the fire close but the sound muffled by the rain. Jackson lay on the ground along with Labouf and Hale.
“Do something,” Hale screamed into the handset.
“They’re fucked,” a voice came back, the lieutenant in charge of Alpha Company.
“A whole fucking platoon?” Hale asked.
Then the mortars started falling.
“Run for the trees!” a lieutenant yelled. “Everybody move.”
They all ran, but Jackson knew the enemy was shooting blind. Only a lucky shot could get them. They entered the trees, the steady beat of the rain replaced by the irregular drip from the leaves.
Another machine gun opened up on them. Jackson lay with his nose pressed into the leaves. He turned his head and saw Labouf lying beside him.
“Fucking Hale didn’t have flank security out,” Labouf said. “We lost thirty or forty men because of him.”
Jackson subtracted that from the total. The addition of the engineers had given them almost five hundred men.
“Jackson, get me Charlie Company,” Hale said.
Jackson spoke into the handset, surprised words were coming out of his mouth. He handed the handset to Hale.
Someone came running through the trees. Jackson threw his rifle up.
“Hold your fire!” a voice yelled.
Reynolds & Raymond dropped down beside them. Short-timer, his painted bones still showing, rode on Raymond’s shoulder.
“We’ll get ’em for you, Major,” Raymond said.
Reynolds sat up to play his M-16. Raymond pulled him back down. Then Reynolds switched on a small battery-powered tape recorder.
“After the jacks are in their boxes/And the clowns have all gone to bed,” the voice of Jimi Hendrix sang.
“Cut that off, goddammit!” Hale shouted.
Raymond took the tape recorder away from him.
The machine gun was joined by another. Pieces of bark and bits of leaves dropped down on them as the gun traversed over their position. The battalion replied with grenade launchers.
“Short-timer’ll get ’em,” Raymond said.
Jackson noticed for the first time that Short-timer wore a cloth vest in which he carried two frags. The pins had been straightened. Raymond held Short-timer on the ground, and the monkey squealed and twitched every time the gun tracked over them.