“It won’t work that way for me,” she said.
He hoped it wouldn’t. She was too smart to end up married to some lifer, some mediocrity who would go nowhere and only married her because she was the daughter of the famous Dick Puller, the lion of Pleiku, who’d taken a Chicom .51 in the chest and wouldn’t even let himself be medevaced out and who died in the shitty little Forward Operations Base at Kham Duc a year after the war was lost, threw himself away for nothing that nobody could make any sense of.
Puller came awake. It was dark. He checked his watch. It would start soon, be over soon. He smelled wet sand from the soaked bags out of which the bunker was built, dirt and mud, gun oil, Chinese cooking, blood, the works, the complete total that was life in the field.
But he had an odd sensation: something was happening. He looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly midnight. Time to get up and—
“Sir.”
It was young Captain Taney, who would probably also die tonight.
“Yeah?”
“It’s— ah— you won’t believe it.”
“What?”
“He’s still out there.”
“Who?” Puller thought instantly of Huu Co.
“Him. Him. That goddamned Marine sniper.”
“Does he have night vision?”
“No, sir. You can see it from the parapet. You can hear it. He’s got flares.”
e didn’t get good targets. Not enough light. But in the shimmering glow of the floating flares he got enough: movement, fast, frightened, scurrying, the occasional hero who would stand and try and mount a rally, the runner who was sent to the rear to report to command, the machine gun team that peeled off to try and flank him.
The flares fired with a dry, faraway pop, like nothing else in the ’Nam. They lit at about three hundred feet with a spurt of illumination; then the ’chute would open and grab the wind, and they’d begin to float downward, flickering, spitting sparks and ash. It was white. It turned the world white. The lower they got the brighter it got, but when they swung in the breeze, they turned the world to a riot of shadows chasing each other through the dimness of his scope.
But still, he’d get targets. He’d fire at what his instincts told him was human, what looked odd in the swinging light, the sparks, the glow that filled the world, the crowd of panicked men who now felt utterly naked to the sniper’s reach. The night belonged to Charlie, it was said. Not this night. It belonged to Bob.
They’d worked it right. No movement, not now. It was too dark to move and they’d get mixed up, get out of contact with one another and that would be that. Donny was on the hilltop, Bob halfway down. The bad guys were moving left to right beyond them, one hundred yards out, where the grass was shorter and there wasn’t any cover. It was a good killing zone, and the first element of the column was hung up, pinned in the grass, believing that if they moved they would die, which was correct.
Donny would fire a flare and move a hundred steps or so on the hilltop, while Bob waited for the flare to get low enough to see the movement. Bob would fire twice, maybe three times in the period of brightest light. Then he’d move too, the same one hundred steps, through the grass, and set up again.
Forward; then they’d move back. They couldn’t see one another, but they had the rhythm. They’d send people up after him, but not soon enough. They wouldn’t be sure where the flares were coming from, because, God bless the little fireworks, they didn’t trail illumination as they ascended.
Bob couldn’t even see the reticle. He just saw the movement and knew where the reticle would be because that’s where it always was, and he fired, the rifle cracking, its flash absorbed in the steel tube that surrounded the muzzle but would sooner or later have to give way. No one could yet see where the shots were coming from.
The flare floated, showering sparks. In its cone of light, Bob saw a man drop into vegetation and he put a bullet into him. He flicked the bolt fast, jacking out the spent case, and watched as another man came through the light to his fallen comrade, and he killed him too. The trick was the light; the flares had to be constant; there couldn’t be a dark moment when there was no light because these guys would move on him then, and they’d be too close, too fast and it would be over.
It lasted for ten minutes; then, having planned it, Donny stopped firing and Bob stopped firing. They both fell back, met at the far side of the hill, and took off on the dead run, leaving behind the confusion. They moved on, looking for another setup.
“That’ll slow ’em. It’ll take ’em ten minutes to figure out we’re gone. Then they’ll get moving again. We should be able to hit them again. I want to set up on that side now. You watch me.”
Donny had the M14 at high port, Bob’s rifle was slung and he carried the M3 in his hands, though he was down now to two magazines. Both his handguns were cocked and locked.
“Okay, you ready?”
“I think so.”
“You cover me if I take fire.”
“Gotcha.”
Bob stepped out of the grass onto the valley floor.
He felt so naked. He was all alone. The wind whistled, and once again it began to rain. The NVA must have been a half klick or so behind. Suddenly, the sky behind them lit up: an assault team had moved up to and taken the now empty hill on which they had situated. Grenade blasts rocked the night, and blades of the sheer light slashed from the concussion. Heavy automatic weapons fire followed: again, they were slaying the demon.
Bob got halfway across, then turned with his grease gun to cover, and called out for Donny to join him.
“Come on!” he shouted.
The boy came across the valley floor and passed Bob, and went to set up on the other side. Bob raced over. Quickly, they found another hill.
“You get on up there,” Bob said. “When you hear me shoot, you fire the first flare. I’m going to open up further out this time. Meanwhile, you set up Claymores. I’m down to about twenty rounds and I want a fallback. If we get bounced, we’ll counterbounce with the Claymores, then fall back. Set them up, and wait to pop flares. Password is … fuck, I don’t know; make up a password.”
“Ah— Julie.”
“Julie. As in ‘Julie is beautiful,’ roger that?”
“Roger that.”
“You hear movement coming to you and he don’t sing out ‘Julie is beautiful,’ you go to Claymores, use the confusion to fall back and find a hide, then you wait until tomorrow and call in a bird after a while. Okay? There’ll be a bird tomorrow. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“If I don’t make it back, same deal. Fall back, go to ground, call in a bird. They’ll be buzzing all over this zone tomorrow, no problem. Now, how many flares you got?”
Donny did a quick check on his bag.
“Looks like about ten.”
“Okay, when they’re gone, they’re gone. Then we’re out of business. Fall back, hide, bird. Okay?”
“Check,” said Donny.
“You all right? You sound kind of shaky.”
“I’m just beat. I’m tired. I’m scared.”
“Shit, you can’t be scared. I’m scared enough for both of us. I got all the fear in the whole fucking world.”
“I don’t—”
“Just this last bad thing, then we are the fuck out of here, and I’m going to make sure you get home in one piece, I give you my word. You done yours. Nobody can say, He didn’t do his. You done it all ten times over. You get to go home after this one, I swear to you.”
There was an odd throb in his own voice that Bob had never heard before. Where did it come from? He didn’t know. But somehow Bob had a blinding awareness that in some way, the life of the world now depended on getting Donny home in one piece. Donny was the world, somehow, and if he, Bob, got him killed out here for this shit, he would answer for all eternity. Very strange; nothing he’d ever felt before on any battlefield.