You boys ain't so tough, he heard from somewhere, and realized it was a mocking memory of a football coach somewhere back in his complicated athletic career.
No, we ain't so tough, he thought. We never said we were. We just tried to do our job, that was all.
But then he came out of the rubbery-smelling thorns that had swallowed him, and saw a figure to the right and recognized it for its caution and precision of movement to be Bob.
He started to rise-No, no-Bob's hand was up urgently, signaling him still and back. He froze and dropped on his belly low to the ground, even as Bob himself did the same.
He waited.
Nothing. No, just the sound of the rain, some occasional thunder, now and then a streak of distant lightning.
It seemed so-The next thing, he was aware of motion on his left. He did not move, he did not breathe.
How had Swagger seen them? How did he know?
What gave them away? Another step and it was all over, but somehow, out of some trick of instinct or predator's preternatural nerve endings, Bob had stunned him into silence and motionlessness a second before they arrived.
Before him the men passed by, no more than ten feet away, sliding effortlessly through the foliage and the undergrowth.
He could smell them before he could see them. They had the odor of fish and rice, for that was what they ate. They were small, bandy-legged guys, the pros of the army of the Republic of North Vietnam, a point man, a squad leader, a squad in file picking its way carefully through the jungle high above the last path, twelve of them. They were bent forward under beige rain capes and wore regulation dark green uniforms, those absurd pith helmets, and carried AK47s and complete combat gear--packs, canteens and bayonets. Three or four of them wore RPG-40s, the hellish rocket grenades, strapped to their backs.
He had never been so close to the actual enemy, they seemed almost magical, or mythological, somehow, the phantoms of so many nightmares at last given flesh. They terrified him. If he moved or coughed, it was over: they'd turn and fire, whole minutes before he could get his M14 into action. He had a bad thought of himself dying up here at the hands of these tough little monkey-men sliding so confidently through the rain and the jungle that were exhausting him.
Almost as if one were talking to him, he heard the silence breaking a few feet away.
'Ahn 6i, mua nhieu qua?'
'Phai roi, chac khQng c6 nguoi my d6m nay,' came the buddy's bitter answer, both voices propelled by the explosive lung energy of Vietnamese, so foreign to American ears and which sounded almost like belches.
'Bihn si6i, dung noi, nghe,' came a sharp cry from the head of the unit, a sergeant, the same the world over and whatever the army, clamping down on his naughty grunts.
The patrol moved slowly along in the dying light and the falling rain, then slowly disappeared around a bend in the slope. But Bob held Donny still for a good ten minutes before giving the okay, excruciating seconds of deathlike stillness in the cold and wet, which cramped the muscles and hurt the brain. But at last Bob motioned, and he slowly uncoiled and began to move up again.
Gradually Bob navigated his way over.
'You okay?'
'Yeah. How the hell did you see them?'
'The point man's canteen jingled against his bayonet.
I heard it, that's all. Luck, man, it's better to be lucky than good.'
'Who were they?'
'That's flank security from a main force battalion.
That means we're getting close. They put out security teams when they move a big unit through, same as us. The sergeant had flashes for the Number Three Battalion. I don't know what regiment or nothing, but I think the biggest unit up this ways was the 324th Infantry Division.
Man, they close down that Special Forces camp tomorrow, the rain stays bad, they could get to Dodge City the day or so after tomorrow.'
'Is this some big offensive?'
'There's several newly Vietnamized units there, it'd do 'em a lot of good to kick all that ARVN ass.'
'Great. I wonder what they were saying.'
'The first one says, Man, it's raining like shit, and his buddy says. Ain't no Americans coming out in this, and the sarge yells back. Hey, you guys, shut up and keep moving.'
'You speak Vietnamese?' Donny said in wonderment.
'Picked up a little. Not much, but I can get by. Come on, let's get out of here. We got to rest. Big day tomorrow.
We kick butt and take names. You bet on it. Marine.'
CHAPTER eleven.
FOB Arizona was in bad trouble. Puller had lost nineteen men already and the VC had gotten mortars up close over to the west, and were pounding the shit out of them so that he couldn't maneuver, and that main force unit would be in tomorrow at the latest. But worse: he'd sent out Matthews with a four-man assault unit to take out the mortars and Matthews hadn't come back. Jim Matthews! Three tours, M/Sgt. Jim Matthews, Benning, the Zone, one of the old guys who dated all the way back to Korea, had done everything--gone!
