very tricky shooting. If he had a Claymore set up, he might have gotten them too. But he didn't. He had nothing but his M14.
He watched them go and they pounded along with grace, economy and authority. They disappeared into the fog.
I have my orders, he thought.
My job is the air, he thought.
Then he thought, Fuck it!' and got up to take them from behind.
They came as he thought they would, good, trained men, willing to take casualties, a platoon strength unit fanning through the high grass. Bob could make them out in the mist, dark shapes filing through the weaving fronds, he thought of a deer he'd once seen in a foggy cornfield back in Arkansas, and Old Sam Vincent, who'd tried to be a father to him after his own had passed, telling him to fight the buck fever, to be calm, to be cool.
He heard Sam now.
'Be cool, boy. Don't rush it. You rush it, it's over and you can't never get it back.'
And so he was calm, he was death, he was the kind hunter who shot for clean kills and no blood trails, who was a part of nature himself.
But he wasn't.
He was war, at its crudest.
He had never had this feeling before. It scared him, but it excited him also.
I am war, he thought. I take them all. I make their mothers cry. I have no mercy. I am war.
It was an odd thought, just fluttering through a mind far gone into battle intensity, but it could not be denied.
The platoon leader will be to the left, not in the lead, he'll be talking to his men, holding them together.
He hunted for a talking man and when he found him, he shot him through the mouth and ceased his talking forever.
I am war, he thought.
He shifted quickly to the man who'd run to the fallen officer and almost took him, but instead held a second, and waited for another to join him, grab him, take command, and turn himself to issue orders. Senior NCO.
I am war.
He took the NCO.
The men looked at each other, dead targets in his eyes, and in a moment of utter panic did exactly the right thing.
They charged at him.
He couldn't possibly take them all or even half of them, he couldn't escape or evade. There was only one thing to do.
He stood, war-crazed, face green-black with paint, eyes bulged in rage, and screamed, 'Come on you fuckers, I want to fight some more! Come on and fight me!'
They saw him standing atop the rise, and almost en masse pivoted toward him. They froze, confronting him, a mad scarecrow with a dangerous rifle atop a hill of grass, unafraid of them. For some insane reason, they did not think to fire.
The moment lingered, all craziness loose in the air, a moment of exquisite insanity.
Then they ran at him.
He dropped and slithered the one way they would not expect.
Right at them.
He slithered ahead desperately, snaking through the grass, until they began to fire.
They paused a few feet from him, fired their weapons from the hip as if in some terrified human ceremony aimed at slaying the devil. The rounds scorched out, ripping the stalks above his head to land somewhere behind.
It was a ritual of destruction. They fired and fired, reloading new mags, sending their bullets out to kill him, literally obliterating the crest of the hill.
He crawled ahead, until he could see feet and spent brass landing in heaps.
The firing stopped.
He heard in Vietnamese the shouts:
'Brothers, the American is dead. Go find his body, comrades.'
'You go find his body.'
'He is dead, I tell you. No man could live through that. If he were alive, he would be firing at us even now.'
'Fine, go and cut his head off and bring it to us.'
'Father Ho wants me to stay here. Somebody must direct.'
'I'll stay, brother. Allow me to give you the privilege of examining the body.'
