He had a moment's gloom. No light, no shoot. They were going to get close enough to stage an assault in the dark, and all the snipers in the world wouldn't make a spit's worth of difference.
'Shit,' he said.
But Bob's mind was so fogged with delirium, adrenaline and fatigue it wasn't processing properly. He had the vague sense of missing something, as if he'd left his IQ points up there on that ugly little hill. It was Donny who pulled another sack from around his waist, opened it, and out came what looked like a small tubular popgun and a handful of White Star illumination flares, the bag was heavy with the cartridges.
'Flares!' he said.
'Can you shoot by flares?'
'If I can see it, I can hit it,' Bob said.
They moved swiftly through the gloom, amid small hills, in the elephant grass, ever mindful they were paralleling the movement of the enemy main force in the valley, ever mindful that there were still scouting units out in the area.
If and when the NVA discovered their dead recon team, they might send still other men after them.
They moved at the half-jog, through a fog of fatigue and pain. Bob's arm hurt desperately and he didn't have any painkillers, not even aspirin. His head ached and his legs felt withered and shaky. They followed a compass heading, re shooting it each time they moved around a hill.
The elephant grass was tall and concealing, but it cut at them mercilessly. There wasn't much water left and even in the falling dark, Bob could see that the clouds hadn't broken, still hung low and close. A wicked, pelting rain started, delivering syringes of cold where it struck them.
Soon the trip became pure blind misery, two hungry, dead-tired, filthy men running on faith and hope toward a destination that might not even exist.
Bob's mind slipped in and out, he tried to concentrate on the job ahead but it would not stay. At one point, he called a halt.
'I got to rest,' he said.
'We been pushing pretty hard,' Donny said.
Bob slipped down into the grass.
'You've lost a lot of blood.'
'I'm okay. I only need a little rest.'
'I got some water. Here, take some water.'
'Then what'll you drink?'
'I don't need to shoot. I just fire flares. You need to shoot. You need the water.'
'You'd think, all this fucking rain, the last thing we'd be is thirsty.'
'I feel like I just played two football games without quarters or half times Just two games straight through.'
'Oh, man,' Bob said, taking a big swig of Donny's water, feeling its coolness rush down his flaming throat.
'After this, I'm going to sleep for a month,' said Donny.
'No, after this,' said Bob, 'you are going on R&R to be with your wife, if I have to go to the goddamned general and ass-kick him myself.'
It was almost full dark. Somewhere birds were beginning to call, the jungle was close, just beyond the hill line.
There was, however, nothing alive in view, once again, they seemed alone in the world, lost in the hills, stuck in a landscape of desolation.
Suddenly Bob's mind sped to other possibilities.
'I got a idea,' he said.
'You got tape? Don't you carry tape? I think I told you to--' Donny reached into a bellows pocket of his cammies, pulled out a roll of gray duct tape.
'This would be tape, no?'
'That would be tape, yes. Okay, now .. . goddamn . the spotting scope. Don't tell me you dumped your spotting scope. You didn't leave that back with your gear, did you?'
'Fuck,' said Donny, 'I brought everything except a helicopter. Hmmm, sink, tent, Phantom jet, mess hall, oh, yeah, here .. .'
He pulled another piece of gear slung around his shoulder. It was a long, tubular green canvas carrying case, strapped at either end, which carried an M49 20X spotting scope, complete with a folded tripod. It was for glassing the really far targets.
He unslung it and handed it over.
'Now what?'
'Oh, just you watch.'
Greedily, Bob bent to the scope case, unscrewed it and reached out to remove a dull-green metal telescope, disjointed slightly, with a folding tripod underneath. It must have cost the Marine Corps a thousand bucks.
