Featherstone would wear Donny's camouflaged utilities, carry his 782 gear complete to Claymores and M49 spotting scope, and the only M14 that could be found in the camp. Featherstone, and Brophy similarly tricked out as Bob Lee Swagger, were bait.
Featherstone, a large, slow boy, was not happy at this job, he had been volunteered for it by virtue of his similarity to Donny. Now he sat, looking very scared, in the S-2 bunker, amid a slew of officers and civilians in various uniforms. Everybody except Featherstone seemed very excited.
There was a kind of party like atmosphere, long absent from Firebase Dodge City.
Bob went to the front of the group, as they sat down, and addressed the primary players: Captain Feamster, who was CO here at Dodge City, an intelligence major who represented the Marine Corps's higher interest, in from Da Nang, an army colonel who'd choppered in from MACV S-2, an Air Force liaison officer, and a civilian in a jumpsuit with a Swedish K submachine gun who radiated Agency from all his pores. A map of the immediate area had been rigged on a large sheet of cardboard, reducing the clearing around Dodge City to its contours and land- forms and the base itself to a big X at the bottom.
'Okay, gentlemen,' Bob started, and no officer in the room felt it peculiar to be briefed by a staff sergeant, or at least this staff sergeant, 'let's run this through one more time to make sure everybody's on the same page in the hymn book. The game starts at 2200, when Fenn and I, dressed in black and painted up like black whores, head out. It's approximately thirteen hundred yards to what I'm designating Area 1. That's where, based on my reading of the land and this guy's operating procedure as the files from Washington reveal, I think he's going to operate.
Fenn and I will set up about three hundred yards from his most probable shooting zone. I don't want to get too close, this bird has a nose for trouble. At 0500 Lieutenant Brophy and Lance Corporal Featherstone roll over the berm at the point designated Roger One.'
He pointed to it on the map.
'Why there, Sergeant?'
'This guy has eyeballed Dodge City, believe you me, and maybe from as close as this bunker. He's been here.
He knows where the best place to get quickly into this little dip here is'--he pointed--'which gives you close to half mile of nearly unobserved terrain.'
'Do you know that for a fact?' asked the leg colonel.
'No, sir, I do not. But before this problem came up, it's where I took my teams out ninety percent of the time, unless we choppered somewhere. He'll know that, too.'
'Carry on, Sergeant.'
'From there, the lieutenant and Featherstone follow the route I have indicated.' He addressed the two of them directly.
'It's very important you stay there. He can't get a good shot at you, because he can't get close enough, but he'll know you're there. He'll start tracking you about five hundred yards out, but you're still too far out to shoot. He don't have a rifle that he can trust to make that far a shot, plus, he wants you out of sight of camp when he hits you, so that he'll have time to make his get-out.'
'How do we know he just won't take them out, then fade?' asked the Air Force major.
'Well, sir, again, we don't. But I been all over that ground. I don't think he can get a shot when they're in the gulch. That's why they have to be right careful to stay there, to move slowly. Now, about one thousand yards out, you got a little-bitty bit of hill. It's Hill Fifty-two, meaning it ain't but fifty-two meters high. It's hardly a tit.
You wouldn't give it a squeeze on Saturday night.'
'I would,' said Captain Feamster, and everybody laughed.
'I may go do it now, in fact!'
After they settled down, Bob continued.
'Sir, when y'all git behind that hill, you go flat. I mean, you dig in, you stay put. He's going to watch you come, he'll be set up on the other side, where you come out to high ground and make your decision which way you're going to turn the mission. You stay put. Now, it may take some time. This bird's patient. But, you disappearing suddenly, he's going to get annoyed, then irritated. He'll move. Maybe just a bit, but when he moves, we put the glass on him, I quarter him and waste his ass.'
'Sergeant Swagger?' It was Brophy.
'Sir?'
'Do you want us to move out in support after you engage him?'
'No, sir. I don't want no other targets in the zone. If I see movement, I may have to shoot without ID. I'd hate it to be you or Featherstone. Y'all just go to earth once you get behind that hill, then move back under cover of the choppers, if we have to call in choppers.'
'Sounds good.'
'This sucks,' Featherstone whispered bitterly to Donny.
'I'm going to get smoked, I know it. It isn't fair. I didn't sign up for this shit.'
'You'll be okay,' Donny said to the shaky man.
'You just walk, then dig in and wait for help. Swagger's got it figured.'
Featherstone shot him a look of pure hatred.
'Anyhow,' continued Swagger at the front of the bunker, 'I take him when he rises to move. If I don't get a solid hit or if I get a miss, that's when I signal Fenn, who's sitting on the PRC-77. You've checked out the radio?'
