'Me? I--' 'Good perks. I'll get you steak and all the bourbon you can drink. When we're in, we live like kings. I'll keep you off crap like night watch and ambush patrols and forward observation and shit-burning details. I'll get you R&R anywhere you want. Bad shit: A) You don't touch the rifle. Nobody touches the rifle. B) You don't do drugs.
I catch you with a buzz on, I ship you home under guard and you'll spend two years in Portsmouth. C) You don't call nobody gook, clink, slope or zip. These are the very finest soldiers in the world. They are winning and they will win. We kill them, but by God, we kill them with respect.
Those are the only three rules, but they ain't to be bent or even breathed hard on. Or, you can sit here in this shit hole waiting for someone to drop a mortar shell on your head. And somehow I got a feeling every shit detail, every shit patrol, every piece-of-crap garbage job that comes up, you're number one on the fuck list. I hope you like the stink of burning shit because you're going to smell a lot of it.'
'Back in the world, I had some problems,' said Donny.
'I got a bad rap. I wouldn't 'cooperate.'
'I figured it from your jacket. Some kind of infraction of orders? You lost your rating. Hey, kid, this ain't the world. This is the 'Nam, have you noticed? It don't mean shit to me, you got that? You do the jobs I give you one hundred percent and I'll back you one hundred percent.
You may get killed, you will work hard, but you will have fun. Killing people is lots of fun. Now, you want in or what?'
'I guess I'm in.'
Within thirty minutes, Donny had been relieved of duty and moved into the scout-sniper squad bay with S/Sgt. Swagger NCOIC--or, as some called him, NCGIC, Non-Commissioned God in Charge--and the only man whose word mattered anywhere in the world.
He had never broken one of the rules until now. He had weighed each M118 round Swagger carried against the one-in-a-million chance of an off-charge at Lake City, he had cleaned Bob's .45, .380 and grease gun and his own M14 and .45, he shined and dried the jungle boots, he laid out and assembled the gear before each mission, he polished the lens of the spotting scope, he checked the pins on the grenades, the plastic canteens for mildew, he hand-enameled the brass on the 872 gear dead black, he did laundry, he learned elevation, windage and range estimation, he kept range cards, he filled out after-action reports, he studied the operating area maps like a sacred text, he handled flank security and once killed two NVC who were infiltrating around Bob's position, he learned PRC-77 protocol and maintenance. He worked like hell, and he had never broken one of the rules.
Only Bob touched the rifle. Bob broke it down after each mission, cleaned it to the tiniest crevice, scrubbed it dry, re zeroed it, treated it like a baby or a mistress. He and only he could touch or carry the rifle.
'It ain't I don't trust you. It ain't you drop it and it gets knocked out of zero and you don't tell me and I miss a shot and somebody, probably me, gets killed. It's just that the bedrock here is simple, clear, powerful and helps us both: nobody touches the rifle but me. Good fences make good neighbors. Ever hear that one?'
'I think so.'
'Well, the rifle rule is my fence. Got that?'
'I do. Entirely, Sergeant.'
'You call me sergeant around the lifers here in Dodge.
In the field, you call me Bob or Swagger or whatever the hell you want. Don't call me sergeant in the field. One of them boys might be listening and he might decide to kill me because he heard you call me sergeant. Got that, Pork?'
'I do.'
And he had never forgotten that rule or any of the rules, until now.
'I forgot,' he said in the rain to Swagger.
'About the rifle.'
'Damn, Fenn, I was just getting to like you, too. I thought you' se going to work out,' Bob said, needling him ever so gently. But then it was back to mission: 'Okay, you done eating? You got your shit wired in tight? This is it. Over this hill, through their security and then sleep a bit. Comes morning we get to do some shooting.'
Bob went first, down to soaked tiger camos and boonie cap, his rifle slung upside down on his back. He carried the M3 grease gun in one hand and the entrenching tool in the other, and he used the tool as a kind of hook, to sink into roots of trees or the tangles of vegetation to get himself up the steep incline a few more feet. He moved with slow, almost calm deliberation. The rain fell still in torrents in the darkening gloom, and it rattled off the leaves and against the mud. How could it rain so hard so long? Was God ending the world, washing away Vietnam and its sins, its atrocities, its arrogances and follies? It seemed that way.
Donny was fifty yards to the left, doing the same trick, but behind Swagger and working carefully not to get ahead. Bob was the eyes up front to the right, Donny's responsibility was behind and to the left, the flank he was on.
But he saw nothing, just felt the chill of the biting rain, and felt the weight of the M14, one of the last few left in the 'Nam. For this job, really, the plastic M16 would have been more ideally suited, but Bob hated the things, calling them poodle shooters, and wouldn't let a man in his unit carry them.
Every now and then Bob would halt them with a raised right hand, and both men would drop low to the ground, hidden in the foliage, waiting, clinging desperately against the incline. But each time whatever Bob had noticed proved to be nothing, a false alarm, and they continued their steady, slow climb.
Twice they crossed paths, switchbacks etched into the vegetation, and Bob waited for five minutes before allowing them out on the open ground even for the seconds or so that it exposed them.
The darkness was falling. It was harder and harder to see. The jungle, far from relaxing as they climbed, actually seemed to be getting denser. There was a time when Donny felt himself cut off entirely from Bob, and a shot of panic came to him. What if he got lost? What would he do? He would wander these ghostly mountains until they caught him and killed him, or he wore down and starved.
