I replied, “I missed because I missed, and I shot because I made the decision to shoot. You got a problem with that?”
He shrugged.
I studied my terrain map, and Dawson asked me, “How far are we from Alpha?”
I put the map away and said, “I don’t know where we are, so I don’t know where Alpha is.”
He didn’t like that answer, so I said, “When we get moving, I’ll find some terrain features and locate us. Don’t worry about it, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.”
You need to establish who’s in control if you’re going to survive, so I said, “Get the men up and moving. Eat on the march. We’ve been here long enough.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sergeant Dawson got Smitty and Johnson up and within a minute, we were moving south through the bamboo, which gave way to scattered trees, then a thick subtropical growth of palm brush that cut our arms, hands, and faces.
Within an hour, I was able to locate us on the map, and I announced, “Rendezvous Alpha is about twenty kilometers south and west. We won’t make it in the daylight, but we need to be there for our 0600 hours rendezvous.”
Everyone nodded, if not enthusiastically, then at least with a little optimism. One more day and night of hell, and by first light, we’d be on the magic carpet, and half an hour later, we’d be in base camp on the coast, showering, eating real eggs and bacon, and getting debriefed, not necessarily in that order. Maybe all at once, if I had my way.
I had exactly twenty-nine days to go in this shithole, and by custom, you didn’t go out on patrol with less than thirty to go. This was my last patrol, one way or the other.
We moved into a triple-canopy jungle where the lack of sunlight kept the brush at a minimum, and we should have been able to make good time, but we were barely able to put one foot in front of the other. We all had heat rash, crotch rot, jungle sores, festering cuts, and foot blisters big as onions. I had the sense that we were making barely two kilometers an hour.
It got darker in the triple canopy long before sunset and by 1900 hours, when it should have still been light, it was getting murky, though now and then sunlight would slant in from the west.
We pushed on, me, Sergeant Dawson, Smitty, and Johnson, the survivors of the radioless patrol known by the radio call sign of Black Weasel. We’d located troop movements, but were unable to report them. We’d evaded large numbers of the enemy, but couldn’t evade a single woman who’d taken an obsessive interest in us. If, in fact, I found myself eating scrambled eggs while being debriefed by Royal Duck and the intelligence types, all I could think to say was that they’d better send a good antisniper team in before they sent anyone else. And don’t be surprised if you never hear from the first couple of teams that go in.
We moved into a long patch of sunlight that was contrasted with a dark shadowy area up ahead, and my senses went into high gear. I was about to say, “Spread out and find shadow,” when a movement up ahead caught my eye.
Even with her flash suppressor, I saw the spit of fire high up in the triple-canopy jungle, not more than seventy-five meters away. Johnson let out a loud grunt behind me, and I heard him hit the ground.
I dropped into a kneeling firing position and emptied a full magazine where I’d seen the muzzle flash.
As I was firing at where she was supposed to be, I caught another movement to my left and turned. I was aware of a long vine swinging in an arc back toward where I was spraying bullets. She wasn’t on the vine, but she’d been on the vine and was now in a tree somewhere to my left.
Dawson and Smitty had been firing bursts where I’d directed my fire, and before I could shift my fire to where I thought she’d ridden the swinging vine, Smitty screamed out in pain, then stood, stumbled a few feet, and collapsed facedown. I saw his body jerk like he’d been hit again.
I shifted my fire to where I guessed she was, but Dawson kept firing at her last location, and I shouted to him, “Monkey vine!”
He got it and shifted his fire to intersect mine. Red tracers sliced through the jungle canopy, and leaves, branches, and palm fronds fell to the ground.
We backed out in a crouch, firing as we went, and regrouped about fifty meters back down the trail, then scrambled into a thicket of brush.
Dawson was visibly shaken for the first time since I’d known him. He kept saying, “Jesus Christ. Oh, God. Oh, God.”
I said, “Quiet.”
He sank cross-legged on the ground, then began rocking back and forth, mumbling something.
I said softly, “Get it together, Sergeant. Get it together now.”
He didn’t seem to hear me, then suddenly he brightened and said, “We got her. I know we got her. I saw her fall. We wasted that bitch.”
I didn’t think so, but it was a nice thought.
I said, “Get up.”
He stood.
“Follow me.”
I led us a hundred meters away, found another thicket of brush and said, “We stay here until midnight, then we move toward our rendezvous. Understand?”
He nodded.
We sat very still until dark, then drank some water and ate a few cookies from home that we’d found on Landon’s body.
Sergeant Dawson had gotten himself under control and to make up for the lapse of cool, he said, “Let’s go out and get her. You got the starlight scope. She don’t have a nightscope. Right? We can see in the dark, she can’t.”
I listened, as though I was considering this insanity, then I replied thoughtfully, “I think our best course of action is to stay put for now. I think I can find Alpha from here even in the dark. If we go out after her, we’ll get disoriented and miss our rendezvous. What do you think?”
He pretended to think about this, then nodded. “Yeah. We need to get back and report what happened. They need to get some antisnipers on this bitch.”
“Right. Let the pros handle it.”
“Yeah…”
“We can go along and give them some tips.”
He didn’t reply for a while, then said quietly, “We’re not going to make it, Lieutenant. You understand? She’s too good. She’s not gonna let us make it.”
I stayed silent for a while, then gave him some good news and some bad news that I knew I’d be sharing with him eventually. I said, “One of us is going to make it. She wants one of us, the patrol leader, me, or the patrol sergeant, you, to go back and tell them about her. Otherwise, all her fucking bullshit was for nothing. She could have wasted all of us at any point since day one, but she didn’t. She made us piss our pants, tighten our assholes, sweat cold and run hot. She risked her own life to wow the shit out of us, and she didn’t do that for a totally dead audience. One of us-you or me-is going to get on that chopper at dawn. And if it’s you, I want you to report very accurately and very professionally what happened here. And you make sure you make the dead look good and bring honor on them. Then you-or me-volunteers to come back here and settle the score. Understand?”
He didn’t reply for a long time, then said, “I understand.”
“Good.” I put out my hand, and we shook.
We moved through the night, and I navigated as best I could, using my compass and keeping track of our paces.
An hour before dawn, the land sloped steeply downward, and I knew we were in the vicinity of Rendezvous Alpha, which was a bowl-shaped depression about a kilometer across, thick with elephant grass.
We had less than twenty minutes to get to the approximate center of this place, and it should be easy, if we just kept going downhill until we started going uphill. Very simple, said Royal Duck. How can you miss the bottom of a bowl, even in the dark?
I looked at the luminescent glow of my watch. It was a few minutes to 0600 hours, and I didn’t hear a chopper, and I didn’t know if I was at the very bottom of this depression.