Arizona Moon. J.M. Graham
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with someone when you couldn’t see faces. You couldn’t get a read on someone’s intent. What seemed to be anger might be sarcasm. Then again, it might not. “It’s my squad,” Burke relented, turning to the invisible men around him. “Tanner, Chief, take one of the FNGs and set up an LP about one hundred paces upgrade.”
A steady stream of bitching in a Southern drawl issued from Tanner’s position. “Shit, Burke. Why me? I thought we was close.”
“We’ll still be close, Buck. At least as close as a hundred paces can be. But do me a favor, make the paces long ones.”
Tanner made a show of temper gathering his gear, but it was completely wasted because no one could see it. Even Tanner couldn’t see it himself. “Shit, man. I hope you ain’t gonna let a little power go to your head.”
“I don’t have any power. I just have headaches.” Burke tried to sense the spot in the blackness in front of him where the Chief might be. “Chief. Where the hell are you?” He was startled when a voice as smooth as whipped butter sounded in his ear. “Here,” was all it said.
Burke reached out but felt nothing. It was like talking to a ghost. “Collect one of the new guys and head up the mountain. And stay sharp.” He had often seen the Chief dragging the blade of that big stag-horn knife across a whetstone, honing it to a razor’s edge, and he immediately regretted using the word “sharp.” Now that he was squad leader, he would have to choose his words more carefully.
The Chief took a few steps and reached down into the dark, catching hold of the collar of a flak jacket. “Which one are you?” he asked.
A voice feigning enthusiasm drifted up. “DeLong,” it said.
The Chief tugged, pulling the Marine to his feet. “Let’s go.”
Haber pushed DeLong’s rifle into his hands as he was hauled away. The two privates weren’t on the buddy program, but they had been traveling the same path together since Okinawa and took some comfort in a shared misery. Being the new guy in an established unit was difficult, which made a companion going through the same experience invaluable. Now, as the three Marines moved off into the night, he was the single odd man out for the first time, and his relief that the Chief’s hand had found DeLong’s collar and not his was a reason for considerable guilt.
The LP detail left the perimeter, crossed a shallow ravine, and started up a lower slope of the Ong Thu. The Chief led the trio, followed by DeLong and then Tanner, who was keeping an audible count of his steps.
“Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three.”
Each number made DeLong flinch, and his apprehension grew with the count. The idea that the growing numbers emphasized how far they were from the platoon was somehow a secondary concern to the actual sound of the counting that seemed to say over and over to anyone listening in the darkness, “Here we are.” He wished Tanner would be quiet but didn’t feel he was in a position to say so. Suddenly, the Chief stopped and came down a few paces. He reached through the open front of Tanner’s flak jacket and grabbed a fistful of T-shirt. “Shut the fuck up, Anglo,” he hissed, the kind of hiss that could make a snake change its mind about biting. Then he was climbing again with DeLong and Tanner playing catch-up. After a few yards Tanner muttered, “He made me lose count.”
Sau squatted in front of a large tree hosting a cluster of tetrastigma vines on their climb to daylight. And just as the vines used the tree, a parasitic rafflesia plant clung to the vine. Though Sau knew little of plants, he knew death, and the enormous rafflesia flower gave off an odor many likened to a rotting corpse. When the breeze shifted with the vagaries of the forest, Sau had to cover his nose with his hand.
He used the stock of his rifle planted between his feet for balance, unwilling to sit or lean against the tree. To stay awake on sentry when you needed sleep, you took an uncomfortable position and stayed in it. His comrade sat a few feet away with his arms folded across his knees and his head balanced on his arms. He would be allowed to sleep until it was his turn to assume an uncomfortable position.
The wind changed direction and swept up from the valley, and Sau closed his eyes and let the coolness wash the plant stench away. But something rode in on the wind, something different. He gripped his rifle barrel with both hands and slowed his breathing so the sound of it wouldn’t interfere with anything he needed to hear: mosquitoes buzzed through the thermal waves rising from his skin; something with small teeth chewed to his left; and the breeze from the valley twisted leaves on their branches until they snapped. Sau held his breath and cupped a hand behind one ear. Something snapped again. Then something crunched.
Sau turned his head slowly and gave a slight whistling chirp, no more than the sound of a distant bird or a small rodent. The other sentry’s head snapped up, and he reached immediately for the grip on the AK at his side.
“Nghe ma,” Sau whispered, alerting his companion to listen to the movement.
Both men raised their weapons and slowly and soundlessly pushed the safety levers into the middle position. Each man gripped the front stock with some force. In full automatic the heavy AK would climb, and this would be a problem firing downhill.
The newly awakened sentry aimed blindly into the dark and waited until sounds in the trees below drew his barrel to its target. Sau was right. There was movement.
They waited motionlessly, letting the sounds pull their rifle sights like divining rods are pulled to water. Their fingers hovered over triggers and the butt plates pressed tightly into their shoulders. Their heads moved as if on gimbals, ears jockeying for better reception. The sounds were close, but they didn’t seem to be coming any closer. And then, suddenly, the movement was gone, leaving only the squealing conversations of wildlife and the pounding hearts of the two NVA, who now had to determine their aim by memory alone.
“Luu-dan,” the sentry said, the word barely audible on his breath, and Sau felt the wooden post of a hand grenade touch his knee.
Sau pushed it away. “Nguyen,” he said, “now,” and the sentry evaporated into the night, soundless as a wraith.
The rising moon found random openings in the cloud cover and shot beams of gray light through the canopy, projecting a faint and flickering show on the jungle floor. Sau watched down the barrel of his rifle as the interplay of moon and cloud repeatedly gave the gift of vision and then swept it away.
The sentry was back within minutes with Nguyen close on his heels. He resumed the vigil while Nguyen and Sau moved behind the malodorous tree.
“Do we have trouble, Sau?” Nguyen asked, trying to hide the apprehension in his voice.
“There was definite movement that stopped on the mountain just below us,” Sau said, watching the play of moonlight across Nguyen’s face.
“How close?”
Sau moved his head in closer for emphasis. “Twenty meters, maybe less.”
Nguyen halved the volume of his whisper. “Just twenty meters?”
“They could be closer,” Sau said.
Nguyen stood silently, letting the impact of the information penetrate his sleep-fogged mind. Recriminations flooded in. They should have moved during the storm. They should have moved in the dark. They wouldn’t be here now if they had only kept moving.
“How many are there?” he asked.
“Not many,” Sau said, wiping sweat from his eyes. “Probably two. I think it is a watch post for their unit. We work in pairs. They work in pairs.”
“And you say they are as close as twenty meters?”
“Or closer.”
“Then their main unit is not far,” Nguyen said, more a voiced thought than a communication.
A prolonged break in the clouds bathed the undergrowth in dancing shards of light, and Sau