“Come on, Major! We gotta fight. Ain’t no use looking at a map!” Leander shouted.
Jackson stood up and began to fire off into the rain and clouds.
Suddenly Leander sat down, his helmet spinning off his head into the mud. He fell backward and hit with a splash in the water that had begun to collect in the pit, lying face down in the mud. The helmet now had two bullet holes in it.
That’ll be me. That’ll be all of us, Jackson thought.
“Come on, Alabama, let’s get out of here,” Labouf said as he stood up. “We can make it.”
“No, don’t go,” Jackson said.
Labouf scrambled up the side of the pit. Jackson tried to stop him, but Labouf pushed him away. Then Jackson slipped in the mud and fell. Jackson got up in time to see Labouf run a few steps and jump into a bomb crater occupied by the man with the frag wrapped in tape. Mortars began to drop in on them, and just as Jackson put his head down, he saw Labouf and the soldier disappear in a cloud of smoke. When he looked up again, individual bills floated down like rain, and bundles still wrapped in plastic bobbed in the water at the bottom of the pit.
“Money man lost his money again,” Raymond said.
Reynolds & Raymond began to scramble to pick up the money.
“Goddamn dinks!” Jackson shouted.
Jackson sucked in great gulps of air and fired his M-16 off into the clouds.
The lieutenant left the pit to take command of the men on the perimeter, taking everyone except Reynolds & Raymond and Jackson with him. The NVA were squeezing them, closing the circle.
Raymond said, “We’ll send Short-timer out, Major. He’ll kill the dinks.”
Short-timer’s bones had almost completely faded away. Raymond straightened out the pins on two frags so Short-timer would have an easy time pulling them out. Then he placed the frags in Short-timer’s vest.
“Go get ’em, Short-timer,” Raymond said.
Short-timer was speeding again. He turned a couple of flips and chattered. Then he pulled the vest over his head and dropped it in the water. Short-timer jumped out of the pit and disappeared in the grass.
“Hey, you fucking deserter! Come back!” Raymond yelled and fired off a burst after him.
“No need for a fight, Major. We’ll buy ’em off,” Raymond said to Hale.
Hale sat in the mud at the bottom of the bunker, and covered his face with his hands. He pulled off his remaining silver eagle and dropped it in the puddle of muddy water at his feet.
“Fucking conscript army. Professional troops would’ve taken those bunkers,” Hale said.
Jackson grabbed Hale by the front of his fatigue jacket and shook him. Then he shoved the handset in Hale’s hand, but Hale refused to take it.
“Get us out of here. Call in choppers. Get the Phantoms back,” Jackson said.
Hale said, “No use. They won’t come.” Then he paused and continued. “Who would want to live in a fucking country where it rains all the time?”
Jackson called the Forward Air Control plane.
“Negative, Freight Train,” a calm voice said, the only one Jackson had heard all morning. “Hold your position. Wait for the weather—”
But the last of the man’s words were lost in a buzz of static. The battery was almost gone.
“We can’t hold. Goddamn, drop it on our position,” Jackson said.
“We can’t copy. Say again,” the controller said.
“On our position,” Jackson said.
Jackson picked up Hale’s map out of the mud and gave the controller a set of coordinates.
“We do not copy. Say again,” the voice said, this time very faint.
Jackson threw the radio into the water.
“Tom Light! We had a goddamn deal!” Jackson shouted.
“Where’s Tom Light?” Hale asked.
Jackson said nothing.
Hale shouted, “I’ll have his ass court martialed. He’ll learn to wear a uniform.”
“Light ain’t here, Major,” Raymond said. “We’ll get us out of here.”
“Be decorations. Soldiers like you. Backbone of the army. Professionals,” Hale said, talking very fast, running the words together.
Reynolds & Raymond gathered up more bundles of money and climbed out of the bunker.
“Hey you fucking dinks,” Raymond yelled. “Buy yourselves some Cadillacs. Buy a new tank for mama-san. Case of frags for baby-san.”
Reynolds & Raymond began to throw bundles of money off into the grass. A burst of automatic rifle fire came from the grass. Raymond went down. Then Reynolds. Jackson fired off an entire magazine on automatic in the direction of the fire.
Jackson looked around. The bottom of the bunker was covered with dead soldiers, only he and Hale left alive. Hale sat in the same position, his back against the wall. The rain was rapidly filling up the pit.
“Major, we’ve got to get out of here,” Jackson said.
“Call in an arclight. Bombs. Goddamn dicks. Kill ’em all,” Hale said, talking so fast now Jackson could barely understand him.
“No time for an arclight,” Jackson said.
The rifle fire had almost stopped. Jackson stuck his head cautiously over the edge of the bunker. A soldier dressed in a pith helmet and green fatigues ran across an open space and jumped into a bomb crater. When a second soldier ran across the space, the man running in what seemed to Jackson like slow motion, Jackson shot him, the dink collapsing with a groan. The man moved, and Jackson emptied the rest of the magazine into him.
“Major, should we surrender?” Jackson asked.
Jackson’s hands shook as he loaded a new magazine.
“Never surrender. We’re getting out of here,” Hale said.
Hale jumped to his feet and started to climb out of the pit.
Jackson pulled at Hale’s fatigues, but Hale turned his rifle on Jackson.
“You mutiny, I’ll kill you!” Hale shouted.
The major climbed out of the pit, paused, and fired a burst from his M-16 into the grass. It was answered by AK-47 fire, and Hale collapsed.
Jackson was alone.
Goddamn you, Tom Light, we had a fucking deal, Jackson thought.
Jackson heard the NVA yelling to one other as they closed in. He decided to surrender. No point in resisting any longer.
Mortar rounds began to fall, the gunners walking them toward the pit. Closer and closer they came, the shrapnel whistling overhead until Jackson decided they had rounds in the air that were going to fall into the pit. Jackson started to scramble up the side, but as he put his hand on a sandbag, a great sound filled his ears. He was falling, but he felt no pain. Then he heard himself hit the water with a splash. He could still see and think. He was not dead. But when he looked down he saw his intestines had fallen out of his stomach. They were shiny and wet looking. He reached down carefully and tried to put them back in. They were wet and slippery and hard to handle, kept falling out of his hands. He worried about the rain falling into his open belly. He smelled his own feces.
I don’t want to die, he thought. Not here. Not like this. Tom Light, you bastard.
Then he succeeded in pushing the intestines back into his stomach and placed his hands over his belly, spreading his fingers to keep them from falling out again. Jackson felt a great sense of relief. Still there was no pain.
He looked up a saw and little man dressed in a green uniform and wearing a pith helmet standing at the edge of the bunker. Jackson searched for his rifle with one hand and could not find it. Instead his hand closed around what he thought at first was a piece of shrapnel, but it was too smooth for that. When he raised it out of the water, he saw Hale’s silver eagle in his hand.
The NVA soldier had a frightened expression on his face, his mouth open, revealing a gold tooth. He carried his AK-47 with the muzzle pointed at the ground. Then the man’s expression changed to a grim, frightened look like he had come upon a dangerous animal like a snake and the soldier brought the barrel of his rifle up.