'A Marine? Way the hell out here in Indian Territory?'
'I don't know who this guy is, but he sounds like he's doing some good.'
Then came a wild barrage of full automatic fire, the lighter, crisper sound of the Chicom 7.62X39mm the AKs fired.
Then the gunfire fell silent.
'Shit,' said Taney.
'Sounds like they got him,' The sniper fired again.
'Let's run the PRC-77 and see if we can pick up enemy radio intelligence,' Puller said.
'They must be buzzing about this like crazy.'
Puller and his XO and Sergeant Bias and Y Dok, the 'Yard chieftain, all went down into the bunker.
'Cameron,' Puller said to his commo NCO, 'you think you've got any juice left in the PRC-77?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Let's do a quick scan. See if you can get me enemy freaks. They ought to be close enough to pick up.'
'Yes, sir. Sir, if air comes and we need to talk 'em in--' 'Air isn't coming today, Cameron. Not today. But maybe someone else has.'
Cameron fiddled with the radio mast on the PRC-77, snapping a cord so that it flew free above the wood and dirt of the roof, then clicked it on, and began to diddle with the frequency dials.
'They like to operate in the twelve hundreds,' he said.
He pulled through the nets, not bringing anything up except static, the fucking United States Navy bellowing about beating the Air Force Academy in a basketball game and-'Shit.'
'Yeah,' said Puller, leaning forward.
'Can't you get us in a little tighter?'
'It's them, isn't it, sir?' asked Taney.
'Oh, yes, yessy, yessy, yessy,' said the head man Y Dok, who wore the uniform of a major in the ARVN, except for the red tribal scarf around his neck, 'yep, is dem, yep, is dem!' He was a merry little man with blackened teeth and an inexhaustible lust for war, afraid, literally, of nothing.
'Dok, can you follow?' asked Puller, whose Vietnamese was good but not great. He was getting odd words- attack, dead, halt--and he couldn't follow the verb tenses, they seemed to be describing a world he couldn't imagine.
'Oh, he say they under assault on right by platoon strength of marksmen. Snipers. The snipers come for them. Ma my, 'American ghosts. He says most officers dead, and most machine gun team leaders also--oh! Oh, now he dead too. Y Dok hear bullet hit him as he talk. Good shit, I tell you, Major Puller, got good deaths going, oh, so very many good deaths.'
'A platoon?' said Taney.
'The nearest Marine firebase is nearly forty klicks away, if it hasn't rotated out.
How could they get a platoon over here? And why would they send a platoon?'
'It's not a platoon,' said Puller.
'They couldn't--no, not overland, across that terrain, not without being bounced. But a team.'
'A team?'
'Marine sniper teams are two-men shows. They can move like hell if they have to. Jesus, Taney, listen to this and be aware of the privilege you've been accorded. What you are hearing is one man with a rifle taking on a battalion-strength unit of about three hundred men.'
'Dey say dey got him,' said Y Dok.
'Shit,' said Taney.
'God bless him,' said Puller.
'He put up a hell of a fight.'
'Dey say, 'American is dead and head man say, You fellas get going, you got to push on to the end of the valley and de officer say, Yes, yes, he going to--oh. Oh ho ho ho!' He laughed, showing his blackened little teeth.
'No. No, no, no, no. He got dem! Oh, yes, he just killed man on radio. I hear scream. Oh, he is a man who knows the warrior's walk, dot I know. He got the good deaths, very many, going on.'
'You can say that again,' said Puller.
CHAPTER fourteen.
When the trigger broke, the North Vietnamese captain lieutenant turned as if to look at Bob just once before he died. All the details were frozen for a second: he was a small man, even by NVA standards, with binoculars and a pistol. An instant ago, he had been full of life and zeal. When the bullet struck him, it sucked everything from him and he stood with grave solemnity, colorless, as all the hopes and dreams departed him. If he had a soul, this would be where it fled to whatever version of heaven sustained him. Then it was over: with the almost stiff dignity of formal ceremony, he toppled forward.
Bob threw his bolt fast, tossing out the spent shell, but never breaking his eye relief with the scope, a good trick it only took a lifetime to master. In the perfect circle of nine magnifications, he saw the men who were his targets looking at one another in utter confusion. There was no inscrutability in their expression: they were dumbfounded, because this was not supposed to happen, not in the rain, in the fog, in the perfect freedom of their
