The squad is silent.
Then Alice grunts, flashes a big grin. "Man, you are one hard dude. How come you ain't a grunt?"
Cowboy and Doc Jay are standing beside me.
Cowboy says, "Mother, I'm serviceable. Joker, that's a well done. You're hard.'
Animal Mother spits. He takes a step, kneels, zips out his machete. With one powerful blow he chops off her head. He picks the head up by its long black hair and holds it high. He laughs and says, "Rest in pieces, bitch." And he laughs again. He walks around and sticks the bloody ball of gore into all our faces. "Hard? Now who's hard? Now who's hard, motherfuckers?"
Cowboy looks at Animal Mother and sighs. "Joker is hard, Mother. You...you're just mean."
Animal Mother pauses, spits, throws the head into a ditch.
Cowboy says, "Let's move. We done our job."
Animal Mother picks up his M-60 machine gun, lays it across his shoulders, struts over to me. He smiles. "You know, Shortround never did see the frag that wasted him, that little kike." Animal Mother unhooks a hand grenade from the front of his flak jacket and pushes it into my chest--hard. Mother looks around, then smiles at me again. "Nobody shits on the Animal, motherfucker. Nobody."
I hook the grenade onto my flak jacket.
Alice picks up the sniper's rifle. "Hey, number one souvenir!"
Rafter Man is standing over the sniper's decapitated corpse. He aims his M-16 and fires a long burst of automatic fire into the body. Then he says, "That's mine, Alice." He takes the SKS from Alice and examines it closely. He looks down and admires his new belt. "I shot her first, Joker. She'd have died. That's one confirmed for me."
I say, "Sure, Rafter. You wasted her."
Rafter Man says, "I did. I wasted her. I fucking blew her away." He looks at his NVA rifle belt again. He holds up the SKS. "Wait until Mr. Payback sees this!"
Alice is down on his knees beside the corpse. With his machete he chops off the sniper's feet. He puts the feet into his blue canvas shopping bag. He chops off the sniper's finger and takes her gold ring.
We wait until Rafter Man takes photographs of the dead gook and we wait until Alice takes photographs of Rafter Man posing with his SKS set in his hip and his foot on the mutilated remains of the enemy sniper.
Then, as we're moving out, Rafter Man sees a reflection of his face in the jagged teeth of a shattered window, sees the new smile upon his face. Rafter Man stares at himself for a long time and then, dropping the carbine, Rafter Man just walks off down the road, not looking back, not responding to our questions.
Cowboy waves his hand and we move out. Nobody says anything about Rafter Man.
We hump back to the Forbidden City and set in for the night.
I mark the short-timer's calendar on my flak jacket--fifty-five days and a wake-up left in country.
Later, in the dark, Rafter Man comes back.
The fighting continues all around us all night, sputters of violence here and there, a mortar round, a curse, a scream.
We sleep like babies.
The sun that rises in Hue on the morning of February 25, 1968, illuminates a dead city. United States Marines have liberated Hue to the ground. Here, in the heart of the ancient imperial capital of Viet Nam, a living shrine to the Vietnamese people on both sides, green Marines in the green machine have liberated a cherished past. Green Marines in the green machine have shot the bones of sacred ancestors. Wise, like Solomon, we have converted Hue into rubble in order to save it.
The next morning Delta Six cuts us some slack and we spend the day hunting gold bars in the emperor's palace.
We enter the throne room of the old emperors. The throne is blood red, studded with inlaid mirrors.
I wish I could live in the Imperial Palace. Bright pieces of porcelain make the walls vivid. The roof is orange tile. There are stone dragons, ceramic urns, brass cranes standing on the backs of turtles, and many other fine objects of undetermined origin and function but obviously of great value and great beauty and very old.
I walk out into the emperor's magnificent garden. I find Alice and Rafter Man looking at some crispy critters. It's impossible to determine which army the men were from. Napalm leaves less than bones. I say, "The aroma of roasted flesh is, admittedly, an acquired taste."
Alice laughs. "This is such a fucking waste. I mean, this place is like a magic temple, you know? The gooks love this place. Blowing it away is like, oh, blowing away the White House. Except that nobody gives a shit about the White House and this place is ten times as old."
I shrug.
"It's crazy," Alice says. "It's just plain fucking crazy. I wish I was back in the World."
I say, "No, back in the World is the crazy part. This, all this world of shit, this is real."
Cowboy comes around later and says that Delta's company commander has passed the word to regroup on the beach at the Strawberry Patch.
We march. We look at the rubble we have made. We get tired of looking at it; there's so much of it.
Twilight.
What's left of Delta Company, 1st Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, First Marine Division, is sprawled all over the beach down by the River of Perfumes. The bearded grunts are sleeping, cooking chow, bragging, comparing souvenirs, and reenacting every moment of the battle, real and imagined, every man a hero beyond belief.
The Lusthog Squad is wasted. We have nailed our names into the pages of history enough for today. Canteens come out. It's too hot to cook so we eat cold C's.
Some of the guys are getting to their feet.
Donlon stands up, shouts, "LOOK!"
Five hundred yards north there is an island in the River of Perfumes. On the island a semicircle of miniature tanks is converging upon a frantic colony of ants. The ants drop their gear and sling their AK-47 assault rifles over their backs and they jump into the river. The ants swim for it.
All of the tanks open fire with ninety-millimeter shells and with fifty-caliber machine guns.
Some of the ants sink.
Cobra gunships buzz out of a horizon that is the color of lead and swoop in for the kill.
The ants swim faster.
The hovering gunships chop up the brown water with their machine guns.
The ants swim, dive, or, in their panic, drown.
Delta Company gets onto its feet.
Three Cobra gunships zoom down to within a few yards of the river and the helmeted door gunners machine-gun the ants as they flop in the water, trapped in a syncopated hurricane of hot air beating down from the swirling rotor blades, trapped in the water while their red life runs out through bullet holes.
Only one ant reaches the river bank. The ant opens fire at the gunships as they hover over the water like monsters feeding.
Someone says, "See that shit? He's hard-core."
One gunship detaches itself from the blood feast and skims across the River of Perfumes. The chopper drops bullets all over the beach, all around the ant.
The ant runs off the beach.
The gunship zooms back to feed on the ants in the water.
The ant runs onto the beach and opens fire.
The gunship banks sharply and comes in low, rockets swooshing from under its belly and machine guns chattering.
Again, the ant runs off the beach.
The gunship is halfway back to the ants in the water when the ant on the beach reappears and opens fire.
This time the gunship pilot brings his ship in low enough to decapitate the ant with the chopper's skids. The gunship fires.