out U.S. 71 to his rendezvous with Jimmy Pye and his and Jimmy's deaths in a cornfield that looked like any other cornfield in the world.
The explosions lifted them, and more parts of Bob seemed to go numb, then sting. This triple shot bracketed the position. This was it. They had them, they had merely to drop a few more shells down the tube and the direct hit would come out of statistical inevitability, and it would be all over. Fire for effect.
'I'm so sorry,' Donny was sobbing.
Bob held him close, felt his young animal fear, knew there was no glory in any of it, only an ending, a mercy, and who would know they lived or died or fought here on this hilltop?
'I'm so sorry,' Donny was sobbing.
'There, there,' Bob said. Someone fired an orange flare over on the horizon. It was a big one, it hung there for the longest time, and only far past the moment when reasonable men would have caught on did it at last dawn on them that it wasn't a flare at all, it was the sun.
And with the sun came the Phantoms.
The Phantoms came low, screaming in from the east, along the axis of the valley, their jet growls filling the air, almost splitting it. They dropped long tubes that rolled through the air into the valley beneath, and blossomed or anger than the sun, or anger and hotter than any sun, with the power of thousands of pounds of jellied gasoline.
'God!' screamed Bob.
'Air! Air!'
They peeled off, almost in climbing victory rolls, and a second flight hammered down, filling the valley with its cleansing flame.
Then the gunships.
Cobras, not like snakes but like thrumming insects, thin and agile in the air: they roared in, their miniguns screaming like chainsaws ripping through lumber, just eating up the valley.
'The radio,' Bob said.
Donny rolled over, thrust the PRC-77 at Bob, who swiftly got it on, searched for the preset band that was the air-ground freak.
'Hit eight, hit eight!' Donny was screaming, and Bob found it, turned it on to find people looking for him.
'--Bravo-Four, Sierra-Bravo-Four, come in, please, immediate. Where are you, Sierra-Bravo-Four? This is Yankee-Niner-Papa, Yankee-Niner-Papa. I am Army FAC at far end valley, I need your position immediate, over.'
'Yankee-Niner-Papa, this is Sierra-Bravo-Four. Goddamn, ain't you boys a sight!'
'Where are you, Sierra-Bravo-Four, over?'
'I am on a hill approximately two klicks outside Arizona on the eastern side of the valley, uh, I don't got no reading on it, I don't got no map, I--' 'Drop smoke, Sierra-Bravo-Four, drop smoke.'
'Yankee-Niner-Papa, I drop smoke.'
Bob grabbed a smoke grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it. Whirls of angry yellow fog spurted from the spinning, hissing grenade, and fluttered high and ragged against the dawn.
'Sierra-Bravo-Four, I eyeball your yellow smoke, over.'
'Yankee-Niner-Papa, that is correct. Uh, I have beaucoup bad guys all around the farm. I need help immediate.
Can you clean out the barnyard for me, Yankee Niner-Papa, over?'
'Wilco, Sierra-Bravo. Y'all hang tight while I direct immediate. Stay by your smoke, out.'
In seconds, the Cobras diverted to the little hill upon which Bob and Donny cowered. The mini-guns howled, the rockets screamed, then the gunships fell back and a squadron of Phantoms flashed by low and fast, and directly in front of Bob and Donny, the napalm bloomed hot and bright in tumbling flame. The smell of gasoline reached their noses.
Soon enough, it was quiet.
'Sierra-Bravo-Four, this is Yankee-Zulu-Nineteen. I am coming in to get you.'
It was the bird, the Huey, Army OD, its rotors beating as if to force the devil down, as it settled over them, whipping up the dust and flattening the vegetation. Bob clapped Donny on the back of the neck and pushed him toward the bird, they ran the twenty-odd feet to the open hatch, where eager hands pulled them away from the Land of Bad Things. The chopper zoomed skyward, into the light.
'Hey,' Donny said over the roar, 'it's stopped raining.'
CHAPTER seventeen.
Even in the hospital, Huu Co, Senior Colonel, was criticized.
It was merciless. It was relentless. It went beyond cruelty. Each day, at 1000 hours, he was wheeled into the committee room, his burned left arm swaddled in bandages, his head dopey with painkillers, his brain ringing with revolutionary adages with which nurses and doctors alike pummeled him in all his waking hours.
He sat stiffly in the heat, waiting as the painkillers gradually diminished, facing faceless accusers from behind banks of lights.
'Senior Colonel, why did you not press on despite your casualties?'
'Senior Colonel, who advised you to halt your progress and send units to deal with the American sniper?'
