A matter of time

hurt. 'Here come the navy birdboys.'

'I wasn't the one who said let's volunteer for Nam. I wanted to go to Germany. Remember?'

Napalm sunflowers blossomed among the trees. They only perturbed the brown brothers more. The volume of fire doubled.

'Them bastards were laying for us again.'

Cherry came snaking through the grass. 'How's the arm, Harald?'

'Okay, except a little broken.' John groaned when the sergeant made sure the bone hadn't broken through the skin.

'Where's the grenade launcher? Lieutenant's got a machine gun that company says needs skragging.'

'In the chopper.'

'Shee-it. Great. Well, Cash, it's you and me hand-delivering it, then.'

Michael unconsciously fingered a grenade. 'What about John?'

'He'll be okay. All he's got to do is lay here and jack off. The dinks will be hauling ass out of here in fifteen minutes. They don't, the navy's going to splatter them from here to the Cambodian border. And the Arvans are coming up behind them.'

The ADs began a second pass, this time firing rockets.

'So take it easy, John,' said Michael, examining his weapon. It had a tendency to jam.

'You be careful. I need somebody to bring me flowers in the hospital.'

'Hell of a way to get the Purple Heart.' Cash's smile was a pale, nervous rictus. 'What I'll bring is that little Le girl you liked so much. The one that works out of the Silver…'

'Never mind the pussy. Let's go.' Cherry slithered toward the treeline. Cash scrambled along in his wake. Bullets whipped the grass, harvesting clippings by the pound.

The gunships took over from the ADs.

You got to hand it to the dinks, Cash thought. They've got balls.

Cherry waved him forward. 'They're in some kind of bunker, else they'd have been skragged already. I want to come at them from the side, so they don't spot us.'

All around the company's perimeter similar little stalks were underway, driving the Cong back. That he wasn't the only one crawling into hell did nothing to calm Michael's nerves, though. It was becoming a very small, very personal war.

'I'll put the grenade in. You cover.'

'Don't be a hero…'

'Hey, man. Not me. This here's Chicken Charlie Cherry talking. If I was in the navy, they'd call me the Chicken of the Sea. But if we don't get that gun, a lot of guys are going to be dead when the Arvans get here.' He resumed crawling, more cautiously now that they were near the trees.

Michael crept along behind, remembering his company commander in infantry school, Master Sergeant Heinz Krebs.

Michael had invariably grandstanded the exercises. And as inevitably, Krebs's softly spoken admonition had been, 'You goddamned idiot. The idea's supposed to be to make the other jackass die for his country.'

Krebs had always had an illustrative tale to show his pupils what they should have done. His father had managed to survive six years of the Second World War, most of them in the hell of the Eastern Front. He had been one of few enlisted men to win the Knight's Cross, Oak Leaves, and Swords to the Iron Cross.

His son had made an impression on Michael. Cash remembered his lessons once he found himself in a place where the bullets were flying.

Three dead men lay just behind the treeline, surrounding an American-made 57 mm recoilless rifle. They were so tiny and skinny that they resembled children. And in years, they were. The oldest might have been seventeen.

'No shells,' Cherry observed.

'Shit. Think this's what got the Huey?' Several spent casings lay to one side.

'Could be. Let's go.'

The snarl of the machine gun was loud now. It sounded like one of the Czech jobs, not the Russian. It was arguing with an American counterpart out in the grass. The American fire was all way high.

'Sixty meters,' said Cherry. 'Let me get about fifteen ahead before you follow me. They surprise me, you surprise them.'

It went like an exercise. Everyone in the area, except the gun crew, seemed to be dead or gone. The ADs and gunships had done a good job.

Cherry made it to the flank of the low earth and log bunker, prepared a grenade, tossed it through the personnel opening in back.

Oblivious to the bursts from the American weapon, Cherry sprinted toward Michael.

A rifle cracked.

Whumpl