So I tell HQ I need about fifty, sixty first-class hunters, Kit Carsons?ll do fine, but I ain?t running u
against this fuckin? army of Nim?s with a five-man team, I don?t care how good we are, and I?ll tell
you this, we?re the best they got down here, goddamn it. Between the five of us, I?d say we got
probably three hundred fuckin? scalps. Not bad for six months on the line, five guys. Corrigan, French
Dip, Squeak, Joe Fineman, and me. Five guys, one head. We?re charmed. We got this daily bet, -we
start off with a bill apiece and each add a twenty every day we?re dry. First one gets his kill, takes the
pot. It ain?t ever gone over eight hundred, that?s four days.
So anyway, we go down to meet the riverboat today and pick up this bunch of sharpshooters HQ sent
down, and the boat crew says the war?s gonna be over any day now and I say, “Sure, I?ve heard that
before,” but the team, they all buy it and they get a couple of jugs of Black Jack from the black market
guy on board and while I don?t put up with drinking out here I figure, what the hell, we got all these
wild-eyed slopes from HQ, why not, they deserve it. So the rest of the team, they get juiced up to the
eyeballs and I have to sit guard all night to make sure this asshole Nim don?t come crawling u on us,
blitz us all. The slopes are okay in the daylight, face to face, that kind of fighting. I don?t trust them at
night when I can?t see them, so I sit up.
All night I keep thinking about the cease-fire and about what that lieutenant, what was his name,
Harris? said, that night in Dau Tieng, about going back to the World and bowling every night and all.
Shit.
Turns out it was a false alarm, about the cease-fire, 1 mean. Another day of grace.
The 558th day: It was beautiful Last night we catch up to Nim just before sunset and we blitz the shit
out of his whole fuckin? bunch. We have them boxed in and we have a fuckin? field day. The Carsons
are crazy motherfuckers. They cut heads, drink blood, I mean really rubber-room crazy. We get in
close enough, the team is having some real sport. We all managed to acquire these Remington pumps
from the juice man upriver, and so the deal is, this time we have to use shotguns to win the pot. So
anyway we load up with rifle slugs; it?s about an inch around and weighs about three ounces and it?s
rifled so you get a little spin on it and when it hits anything solid it fuckin? blows up. You
