'You may not even have to make it that far. I hear the ARVN are going to take over Dodge City, and you guys'll be rotating out early. You won't even have to see your
DEROS.'
'Yeah, I heard that too, but I don't want to count on anything the Marine Corps wants to give me. I'm still locked onto DEROS. I make DEROS and I'm home free.
Back to city streets, NYC, the Big Apple.'
'Cool,' said Donny, 'you'll have a good time.'
'I'd ask you what it felt like to be so short and I'd buy you a beer, but I know you want to go to bed and make tomorrow come earlier. All that processing out.' It was company policy that no man went into the field on his last day.
'Well, sometime back in the world, you can buy me a beer and we'll have a big laugh over this one.'
'We will. You're staying in, right? You're not going out with Swagger tomorrow.'
'Huh?'
'You're not going out with Swagger tomorrow?'
'What are you talking about?'
'I saw him hunched up with and Brophy and a couple of the lifer NCOs in the S-2 bunker. Like he was going on a mission.'
'Shit,' said Donny.
'Hey, you sit tight. If they didn't ask you, you don't got to go. Just be cool. Time to take the golden bird back to the land of honeys and Milky Ways.'
'Yeah.'
'Go in peace, bro.'
'Peace,' said Donny, and Mahoney dipped out of the hootch.
Donny lay back. He checked his watch. It was 2200 hours. He tried to forget. He tried to relax. Everything was cool, everything was calm, he was home free.
But what the fuck was Swagger up to?
It ate at him. What deal was this?
It bothered him.
He can't go out. He promised.
Shit.
He rose, slipped out the hootch and walked across the compound to the dark bunker of the S-2 shop, where he found Bob, Feamster and Brophy bent over maps.
'Sir, permission to enter,' he said, entering.
'Fenn, what the hell are you doing here? You should be checking your gear to turn in to supply tomorrow,' said Feamster.
'Is something going on with Sierra-Bravo-Four?'
'Sierra-Bravo-Four is going back to the world, that's what's going on with Sierra-Bravo-Four,' said Bob.
'Looks like a mission briefing to me.'
'It ain't nothing that concerns you.'
'That's a map. I see route markers pinned on it and coordinates penciled in. You going on a job, Sierra- Bravo?'
'Negative,' said Bob.
'You are too,' said Donny.
'It ain't a goddamn thing. Now, you git your young ass out of here, got that? You got work you should be doing.
This ain't no time for screwing off, even if you're down to a day and a wake-up.'
'What is it?' Donny said.
'Nothing. No big deal.'
'Sir?'
'Sergeant,' said Feamster, 'you ought to tell him.'
'It's a rinky-dink recon, that's all, a one-man thing. We haven't covered the north in a couple of weeks. They could have infiltrated in, gone through the trees and have set up in the north, a few klicks out. I'm just going to mosey out to see if I cut tracks to the north. A couple klicks out, a couple klicks in. I'll be back by nightfall.'
'I'm going.'
'My ass, you are. You have to spend tomorrow processing out. Nobody goes into the field on the last day.'
