“I see,” said Dick. “Well, you’ve got a few hours to pull yourself together. Then tonight you go back. Tonight we all go back.”
The boy looked at him.
“I don’t want to go back,” he said baldly.
“Neither do I,” said Dick, “but I don’t see anyone else here, do you?”
“No, sir.”
Dick stood, winked at the kid, earning a little smile.
“I’ll try to do better tonight, sir,” the kid said.
“You don’t have to do better, you just have to be there.”
He could see the other Delta officers moving through the collection of dazed men while the Delta medics worked to patch the walking wounded.
Finally, Skazy came over to him.
“It’s not good,” he said.
“Anybody get close enough to get a peep under the canvas?”
“Nobody got within a hundred yards of their position.”
“So who are we fighting, Major? What’s your reading?”
“Whoever he is, he’s very good. He read the terrain, so he knew exactly the point of attack. He put his automatics in the center of the line and he must have linked belts. The volume of fire was terrific. The kids seem to agree there were two heavy guns hosing them down, plus lots of small arms. Lots of fire, so ammo must not be a problem. But that guy up there, he’s been in a fight or two in his time. He knows his business. I’ll bet we find he’s Forces. I mean, this is straight ’Nam, your basic A-team scenario, defending a tight hilltop perimeter against superior numbers way, way out in Indian country. That’s Forces work.”
“I was in a few fights like that,” Dick said.
“I was too,” said Skazy. “As long as his ammo holds out, he’s going to be a motherfucker to kill.”
“Did Bravo do any damage?”
“Evidently someone covered the withdrawal with some fire from one of the M-60s and some of the men think he may have hit people.”
Dick shook his head sadly.
“Where’s, the CO?”
“Over there. Young guy, first lieutenant. Named Dill. The real CO, that Captain Barnard, he didn’t make it off the hill.”
Dick found Dill sitting by himself smoking a cigarette, staring out into the distance in the bright sun.
“Lieutenant?”
Dill looked up slowly at him.
“Yes, sir?”
“Lieutenant, when you’re talking to me, you’ll be on your goddamned feet, if you please. Stand up.”
Dill rose to the unpleasantness in Puller’s voice with the look of a martyr.
“Excuse me, but, sir, we’ve just been through—”
“Lieutenant, you let me do the talking, all right? You just nod your head when I say so.” The young National Guard officer blinked. “This is pathetic. This is disgraceful. Get these people together. Get them out of the open. Do you have security teams out?”
“No, sir, I thought—”
“What happens if the people on the hill send an assault squad down here? They could set up an LMG about four hundred meters up the slope and dust every man here. Or maybe there’s another enemy unit in the vicinity, and they’re going to come out of the trees firing full automatic.”
Dill, a thick-set, athletic-looking man who nevertheless had something of the surly melancholic about him, simply responded by falling into a deeper glumness.
Finally, he said, “We got killed up there while you guys sat down here and did crosswords. That’s not fair. That’s just not fair. I want to know who’s up there and why we have to die to get them and what is—”
“There’s a madman with an ICBM and a launching pad. Lieutenant, if we don’t get up there, all this, everything you see, everything you’ve ever dreamed or hoped for and loved or cherished, it’s all gone in a few seconds. Do you understand?”
“Who?” was all the stunned officer could say.
“We’ll know when we kill him.”
“He’s one of you, isn’t he?” the officer said. “He’s some kind of Delta guy or Green Beret. He’s one of your little club, isn’t he?”
Dick had no answer to this charge.
“Get your men organized, and get them under shelter. Form them up into their squads and platoons, and take roll. Get them fed. You’ve got to make them a unit again, Lieutenant, because we go back tonight. If you can’t do it, I’ll find somebody that can.”
The lieutenant looked at him, sighed, and went to look for his sergeants.
It had to be Delta Three, goddammit, thought Uckley. He knew he had to say something and that time was slipping away. But Delta Three wouldn’t sit still. He was exceedingly agitated and kept repeating himself to the firemen, who milled in jittery excitement around the big red truck in the Burkittsville Volunteer Fire Department.
“You guys go to the house on the right. Only to the right. The one with the smoke coming out of it. Don’t worry about the smoke; it’s just a chemical device in a pail or a pot or something up on the second floor. Get in there, and take cover; we think there’s going to be some shooting next door. No matter what you hear, you keep your heads down, is that understood?”
The firemen nodded and giggled excitedly among themselves. They were amateurs, too, volunteers, townspeople, and this was shaping up like a great adventure to them.
Finally, Delta Three came back, breathing hard. Uckley was aware that he ought to have been more assertive, but Delta Three had one of those flinty, righteous personalities that assumed its own perfection as a basic operating principle.
“You set, sir?” he asked.
Uckley thought he was set. He had on a black fireman’s slicker and helmet, remembering that when he was a kid he wanted to grow up and be a fireman; he had an ax; he also had his own Smith&Wesson 686.357 Magnum, which he had bought used from a retiring agent and hadn’t fired in eleven months. Delta Three meanwhile took the moment to do a fast check on his own weapons for the upcoming close encounter, an accurized Colt.45 automatic for backup and a H&K MP-5 with the thirty-round mag and the collapsing skeleton stock, which had been jammed shut, hanging on a sling under his slick and shiny coat. Both men had Kevlar bulletproof vests on also.
“Delta Three?”
The soldier didn’t look at him. He was still checking gear. It was getting so close to Co time. He had two smoke grenades on his belt and two stun grenades and two teargas grenades. He had a gas mask in a case. He had a fighting knife.
“The boots,” he said to Uckley. “You think we ought to change our boots?”
The man looked down to point out that he had on Corcoran jump boots.
How could he be thinking about shoes at a time like this?
“I don’t think there’s time,” said Uckley, who was wearing black Florsheim wingtips.
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Things are going to happen damned fast.”
“Delta Three?”
The man finally looked at him.
“I just want to make one thing clear to you. They made it very clear to me, it has to be clear to you.”
Delta Three’s eyes were guileless and blue. They were somehow Baptist eyes, Uckley thought. They wouldn’t know sophistication or irony or cynicism; they’d know only duty, honor, country. They’d know mission.
“This is a prisoner mission. Not a hostage-freeing mission, a prisoner-taking mission. We’ve got to stick by our priorities. D-do you understand that?”
Delta Three just looked at him.
“You have to understand what’s important here,” said Uckley, not quite believing it himself.
“She’s smoking!” came the call from one of the firemen at the binoculars. “Boy, she’s really smoking.”
The men climbed aboard the fire engine.
“Whoo-ceeeeee!” some idiot yelled.