Three A.M., after the gear check and map familiarization that had occupied the mortar squad till 0100, was bleary as a hangover. Givens lay half-asleep, sprawled on a nest of life preservers in a small compartment just forward of the helicopter deck.
“Got all your mortar team shit?” the Top was saying to Silkworth. The two noncoms glanced over the piles of equipment, ammunition, and weapons. Will saw the special intensity as they checked out the dozing troops.
“Looks like about a helo full, don’t it?” said Silkworth, grinning at the older man.
“No jokes, Silky. You got it all, or not?”
“Yeah, Mick, I got it,” said the sergeant quietly. “Can I send them up to breakfast now?”
“Soon as you’ve made muster and checked equipment, head them up. But leave a gear watch.”
“Goddamned right I will,” muttered Silkworth, to nobody in particular, since the Top had left already, hustling himself along to the next station. “Liebo! Pry your eyes open. Keep an eye on all this crap, specially the forty-fives.”
“Why me all the time? I just got to sleep.”
Silkworth ignored him, turned to the others. “Rest of you, go on up to chow. No grab-assing or fuckin’ off. Get your butts back here by zero-three-thirty or I’ll kick ’em back for you.”
Givens watched Cutford flash the sergeant the finger, but Silkworth’s back was turned. He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them the corporal’s perpetual scowl was looming over him. His hands tightened.
“Goin’ to get som’n eat?”
Givens said, “Yeah, Cutford.”
“Surprisin’ me, Oreo. Figured you’d be puking scared by now. You know, in a hour we be hittin’ the beach.”
His mouth was dry, but Cutford was wrong about his not wanting breakfast. He wanted it desperately. He turned away through the hatch, heading for the mess deck.
Spooning up fresh scrambled eggs, nearly a plateful, he blew into a coffee mug so hot it burned his fingers just holding it. The squids in the serving line acted different this morning. They ladled the food with anxious, ingratiating smiles. Nice of them to care, now that we’re leaving, he thought vaguely, sipping at the cooled edge of the cup. He stared at the Formica tabletop, as if in its random maculation he could read what this day would bring. But he was not thinking about himself.
Not yet. Instead he found himself thinking about other days, other men.
About other landings. North Africa, Iwo, Normandy, Inchon. The names you learned in boot camp. The men on those gray ships, had they looked as young, eaten in the same strained quiet as the marines around him, boys of eighteen and twenty bending shaved heads low over their plates, eyes far-focused? Had they felt the same as he did now? No matter that a dozen of his mates crowded hip to hip at the same table. Each ate alone.
They were going in. And this was where the real waiting began. It was internal, a preparation of the soul. This was the point when it became not a matter of the mass, the team, even for men who worked and drilled as a team. But of the individual.
Will Givens finished his eggs and started on the hash. A squid messman, younger, skinnier, and blotchier than Washman even, rattled down a platter of buttered toast. He did not thank him. It took several seconds before he even noticed it. He finished the hash, crunched half a piece of toast in a still-dry mouth, drained his mug to the bottom, and shoved back his plate. Before he could get up, though, the sailor was there, reaching for it.
“Want more, Marine?”
“Huh?”
“Y’all had enough, buddy? Can I get you something else?”
“No. No, thanks.” He stared after the messman, uncomfortable; his politeness had just the flavor of a warden serving a final meal.
“You finished, Will?” said Silkworth, breaking into his bemusement.
“Uh, yeah, Sarge. Just leaving.”
“Take your time. Have another moka joe. Just got word: movement’s delayed.”
“Anything wrong?”
“Don’t know. That’s the word, that’s all they tell me. Go on, have another cup.”
He muttered thanks and sat down again. He did not want more coffee, but he took some anyway. Delayed … he was not sure whether to be glad or not. Maybe if it was delayed enough they wouldn’t go in. But then if it was delayed too much, and they still went, they would be landing in broad daylight. He was afraid even to be annoyed at the extension of the wait. Afraid because at least now, right now, he was warm, he was alive, he was safe. And in a few hours, he might wish with all his might to be back aboard the old Spiegel, drinking hot joe.
The messman came by and filled his cup again. Just this once, he thought, sipping, why not forget it. Don’t worry, don’t even have an opinion. It’s too far beyond you to affect, too far even for you to understand. Did anyone at all understand what was going on? Here, aboard the ships, ashore? He doubted it.
He waited.
Helmet tipped over his eyes, blanket roll and pack strapped to his back, flak jacket hunched forward on his chest, he lay later on a pile of green lifejackets and brown cases of c-rats, staring at his book. In the diagram electrons were shown charging one side of a condenser, while on the other the little crosses of positive charges piled up, row on row.
The holding station for helo embark was twenty feet long, six feet high, and no more than eight feet deep. Into this less than one thousand cubic feet had been crammed an entire planeload, thirty men and all their gear. Wash-man and Hernandez lay almost indecently nestled, save that they were turned away from each other, on a stack of packs, Washman with his eyes closed and Hernandez with his open, but both looking equally remote. Harner sat apart from them, chain-smoking Marlboros. Liebo’s face hovered over a tattered paperback; the title was visible; it was School Mistress. The others in the compartment were grunts, the three rifle squads. Their landing team was forty strong, the capacity of one of the helicopters. And that one plane would hit with eighteen, twenty other choppers. They wouldn’t be going in alone. That was one of the things the crowding of them all into that small compartment meant. It was reassuring, a reinforcement as well as a preparation for the even more cramped space inside the fuselage of a helo.
Cutford and Silkworth sat near the door, together yet apart, and sitting that way too, as if their noncomness set them together and the other thing set them apart, and right now both these things were working and so they did not know how to sit. From time to time the sergeant turned his wrist to bring the face of a black twenty-four-hour combat watch into view. The compartment was silent, closed off, filled with men and then sealed, like a jar. And all they could do, inside the invisible glass that walled each one of them off from the others, was wait.
“Time you got,” Givens heard Cutford grunt.
“Five ten.”
“When they gonna move their fat asses? Said we was gonna move out at four.”
Silkworth said something too low for the others to hear, and Cutford grunted appreciation.
He felt his stomach move uneasily and forced his attention back to the book. Maybe the jitters, like seasickness, would back off from you if you ignored it. Let’s see … the voltage from the battery built up a kind of pressure. It squeezed the electrons into the plates kind of like air blowing up a tire. He could see that. The higher pressure pump you had, the more air you could get in the tire. Then you sealed the tire up, and then when you needed the electrons they were there to do the work for you.
He yawned hugely, unexpectedly, and lost the page. Damn, he was sleepy. He looked over at Washman, yawned again, and was considering catching a couple of Zs himself when the outer hatch banged open, bringing in a blast of night air and the roar of descending helicopters.
It was the captain, in battle dress and light pack, the anodized railroad tracks of rank black in the instantly red light of the compartment. Suddenly everyone was awake. Silkworth jumped up, looking at him expectantly. The captain’s mouth opened, but the turbines were too loud. The men stared at him blankly. He glanced over his shoulder, then half-shut the hatch. “You men—get ready to go.”
“Now, sir?”
But the captain was gone, the hatch clanging steel-hollow behind his back. Silkworth turned, motioning impatiently. “You heard him. Get that gear buckled up. Liebo—where the fuck’s Dippy?”
“I’m back here.”
“Get that helmet on, damn it. Gear check! On your feet.” As they scrambled up, their legs tangling in straps and slings, he moved through them, tightening buckles, slapping their helmets for fit. He pulled a cammie stick from his pocket and smeared more of the smelly paint under Washman’s staring eyes. “Washout. You feelin’ okay?”
“Sure, Sarge.”
“No butterflies? No whimping out?”
“No sweat, Sarge.” The Washout straightened thin shoulders. “I’m, uh, up for it.”
“Good.” Silkworth slapped his arm and moved on. “Givens? This is it. You ready?”
Ready. Was he? This was the moment marines were supposed to live for. The moment they had screamed after at boot camp, simulated so many times on the bayonet course, the grenade range, Combat Town; the assault tactics at Geiger and LeJeune, practice landings here in the Med. This might be it for any of them. Nobody knew what waited for him ashore. His hand slid sideways to brush the reassuring steel of the mortar tube.
“Answer up, Private.”
It didn’t matter a bit. Ready or not, he was going. “Yes, Sergeant, I’m ready.”
“Got pins?”
“What?”
“Here.” Silkworth pulled small objects from an unbuttoned blouse pocket, counted three of them out into his hand, and turned his head sideways. “See these in my helmet cover? Spares for the shells. If you get antsy, drop the pin for a round, you got one handy to safe it with.”
“Thanks, Silky. That’s a good idea.”
The men stood waiting in the compartment, swaying to the roll, glancing down to where each had organized his gear in the same way. You griped about the manual, Will thought, but when you were doing things for real, the Corps way was best. The compartment smelled of sweat and greasepaint and gun oil, and they took in the smells in short hard breaths as the minutes ebbed by, slow as time flows as you lie waiting, anticipating, when a woman has promised herself and then left to make the preparations.
“What the fuck,” said Hernandez at last. “Din’t he say we were going?”
“Sound like it to me,” said Cutford.
“Must’ve been ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes sure,” agreed the corporal, his face like dark stone, embittered, unsurprised by anything they did to him.
“Stand easy,” said Silkworth. He banged open the hatch, lighting the world red, and then disappeared.
“We goin’?” asked Washman.
“Shut up,” said Cutford, looking toward the door.
“Jesus, Cutford—when Hernandez or Givens says somethin’, you don’t tell them to shut up.”
“Shut up, goddammit, or I’ll tear your fucken throat out!”
Silkworth came back. He unslung his rifle and tossed it onto the lifejackets. When he broke the straps on his pack and lowered it to the deck too, the rest of the men began to sag back into their corners, their niches, their nests, again.
“What’s the scoop?” said Cutford.
“Some screw-up … lieutenant says stand easy on station.”
“He tell you how long?”
“Lieutenants don’t tell sergeants how long they gotta wait. Even if they know … ah, fuck it.” Silkworth seemed to give way suddenly, fold inward, not from lack of strength but from disgust at having to justify what officers did to reasonable men. He stretched full length on the deck, so that no one could move between him and the hatch without stepping on him. In a moment he was snoring loudly.
“Hurry up and wait,” muttered Liebo.
“Ain’t we going?” said Washman again. This time no one answered him.
Half an hour later the door banged again. This time it was the Top. He stared around at the sleeping men, then bent to Silkworth and shook him. The sergeant blinked and sat up. The senior sergeant, squatting beside him, whispered rapidly for several minutes. Halfway through he was interrupted by Silkworth’s cursing, but the Top cursed him right back, into silence again, till he was done. When he had finished he stood up, only five-feet-five in combat boots, but still big enough to fill the compartment by himself. “And that’s your orders. Any questions? Gear man’ll be around in a minute.”
“It’s crazy, Top. Fucken crazy. We’re going to need those tubes. There’s fucken Russians ashore here, man.”
“We don’t know what it’s like ashore. They do. And those are orders, and you’re a marine. So get moving.” The Top looked around the compartment once more, then slammed the hatch hard as he left. The men stirred.
“On deck!” bawled Silkworth angrily. “Listen up, listen up! We got to turn our mortars in, and like right now.”
“What the fuck, Silky!”
“What he mean, turn them in?”
“Shit if I do, man!”
He waited out their griping for perhaps three seconds, then bawled louder than all of them put together, “Gaw-damn! You people cry like fifteen monkeys fucken’ a football at how much gear you got to carry, then you don’t want to leave it when you’re ordered to. Give me a troop of palsied old-maid librarians in front of you bastards, at least they’d do what they was told. Shit fire, if they was free blow jobs waitin’ ashore, you’d whine how you had to unbutton your flies. Now break that gear out! Cutford, count it all, make sure we leave every piece of the weapons and every round ’a’ mortar ammo.”
“They sendin’ us in without cover,” said Cutford. “You know that? How we gonna—”
“We gonna do it like U.S. Marines,” said Silkworth, cutting the corporal off. “It’s a tricky landing; the people here can cut us to cat meat if we piss them off, and the Man says not to take in anything but rifles. I don’t get it but diplomacy ain’t my job. My job is to follow orders, just like you, and if I wanted to live forever I wouldn’t be wearin’ this green suit. So shut up that wicked mouth, Cutford, and roll out those tubes.”
I don’t get it either, Givens was thinking, pulling the sleeved rounds from his pack loops. We’re mortarmen—mortars, they always said, were part of company firepower. What was suddenly wrong with them? But he took one look at Silkworth, glaring around like Jehovah with thunderbolts in the middle of the compartment, and decided not to ask.
The inner door opened and the armorer came in, bent like a Christmas tree under a festoon of M-16s and cartridge bags. “Gitcher rifles here,” he said from beneath the pile. “One ammo pouch each. Sign these cards here. Can’t have the piece without the signature.”
“Fuck! These ain’t our fucken rifles!”
“Ain’t got time to check numbers. Just grab one and sign.”
“Cutford, count ’em off.”
“Magazines. Can you give us extra magazines?” Cutford asked the armorer.
“They said one each, but … I brought extras. Just don’t flash ’em around, okay?”
The corporal passed Givens a rifle. Their hands met on the stock; they stared into each other’s eyes for a long intent second. Then he turned back to the armorer, and began handing out ammo to the others. Will jacked back the bolt and locked it to the rear, checking the chamber, and peered down the barrel. Oily. A reserve weapon. But that would shoot out, or he could swab it himself after they landed. He reversed it and clicked the sights on twelve, sixteen—standard setting when you picked up a strange piece. But how do they expect us to shoot with these? he thought, glancing at Silkworth, but deciding once more not to speak. Over fifty yards, we won’t have any idea where we’re hitting. The infantrymen watched them, amused.
“This all of it?” said the armorer.
“Thass right,” said Cutford bitterly. “You got ever’ bit of our mortar gear there.”
“Gimme a man to carry it.”
“But what are we gonna do?” Washman muttered. “We go through all that shit training on mortars—now what are we gonna be? Just riflemen?”
“No, you’ll never be that, buddy,” said one of the grunts.
In the midst of it the lights turned to red again and they swung toward the door. It was the captain again. But this time he said nothing; just looked at them for a moment, and then jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
“Helo team thirteen, up and ready!” sang Silkworth. “Let’s go!”
On the move at last. Will tugged his chinstrap tight one last time and picked up the rifle. They shuffled forward in the red light, bent like old men, weapons dangling. The black mouth of the hatch was filled with night and wind and the scream of turbines, and then with leaping men. Silkworth’s face, turned backward for a parting shout: “Remember, watch the blades! Rear rotor’s on the left!”
Then it was his turn. He put his arm to Washman’s shoulder and they went through together.
Night, sound, and rain. They staggered onto a rain-slicked flight deck, caught icy spray on their uplifted faces. Sound struck them like a left hook, the buffeting of rotor-wash like a right. Lights pulsated weirdly in the mist, making the stumbling queues of men leap to existence and then fade to black, the strobe of the rotors slicing each second into a dozen slow-motion frames. Still pictures: men leaning forward into the rain, men looking back to the safety of the ship, two marines helping a comrade up, troops running under the burden of full combat gear. The stationary ballet of the helo deck crew, wands glowing orange, speaking in slow circles to the pilots who waited invisible for their human freight to board. And above and behind the rainswept stage, decks above, the outangled windows of Pri-fly glowed jade and ruby, silhouettes of earphoned figures leaning forward in their boxes, audiences to the dance below, directors to more machines that hovered waiting, pulsating in mist-shrouded aureoles a hundred feet aft of the rolling ship … the helicopters looming gigantic in red-flickering darkness, their screaming presence leaning on the men who ran, it seemed to each one, endlessly across an endless deck toward them, each one blinking through the wind-driven rain toward the loom of his chopper, each man reminding himself Fifty-threes, tailrotor’s on the left. Picking out as he lumbered forward the blunt curve of the forward section, the flickering fatal halo of the rotor, the blue steady flame of the engines as they rounded the tail, still running, packs banging on their backs, rifles at high port. The exhaust kicked up stinging droplets from the flight deck, mixed hot blast with soaking cold rain. Givens tripped on a tiedown and felt momentary panic. He recovered with one hand to the deck and ran on, blundering against Washman as the squad slowed, bunching together, then pounded up the ramp into the lightless maw of the plane. He moved left, felt the seat jam horizontal into the backs of his legs, and groped for the belt. Not till it clacked solid did he feel secure. He leaned back gasping against the bulkhead, staring still into darkness, feeling the others close around him.
The ramp came up. The engines rose to a roar. The fuselage shuddered, rotated under them, and launched them suddenly heavy into the air. Scared, exultant, he screamed wordlessly into the wall of sound, as loud as he could, the other men screaming too, none of it audible.
They were off. The deck tilted, the aircraft throbbed, its interior so bright with sound, conversation and thought alike were impossible. The engines cut through the thin aluminum like a cleaver. A dim red bulb came on in the curving overhead, and the rows of faces flicked on as if the light were behind them, behind red translucent masks, half-hidden by the helmets. The deck tilted again and slanted to the side, hard. He caught a windowed glimpse of a lit square of deck, a pulsating ruby cauldron where the next settling wave of aircraft stirred the mist into tornadoes, the rest of the ship black against black ocean.
The first gust of raw fear tightened his hands on his weapon, lifted his head, thrilled along his back with the buzz of the airframe. It blew his nostrils wide with the smells of oil and hot metal, man-sweat and rain. Staring out between illuminated faces, his gut tight against the straps as the plane shuddered around in its turn, he thought to himself suddenly: I will never forget this. This was no book, no song. This was real, and he knew with absolute sureness that he would remember it all, just as it was in this moment, no matter how many years would pass before he remembered nothing. Because this was life itself, this screaming moment lit in scarlet, tilting through a foreign night in this aluminum coffin toward whatever was to come.
He lifted his head to the battle; to the trumpets he saith, yea, yea.…
The deck steadied. The ship rolled backward from the window, replaced by darkness and then a pearl-gray glimmer of predawn as the horizon came up. The helicopter settled, as if into grooves. It ceased climbing and tilted forward. The engines dropped to a deafening drone. The light brightened, showing each of them the eyes of the others and the expressions: Silkworth competently bland; Cutford scowling, still pissed off over the mortars, eye-whites glistening against the total dark beneath his helmet; Washman scared, mouth open, eyes fixed on Givens’, but unquestioning, accepting; Hernandez scared too but alert; Harner blank-faced, eyes closed, fingers laced tight over packstraps; Liebo staring out the window, remote, dreamy-eyed.
The chopper settled and tilted, vibrating, droning in repetitive patterns through the ribbed riveted metal, through the snake-writhe of wiring and hydraulic lines that the brighter red and now a fine gray wash from the windows, not yet light but just bright enough to be there, showed their inquiring eyes around the interior of the helicopter. The Stallions were big; they carried thirty-five men at a lift, but he had the same feeling of eggshell, kerosene-smelling fragility he had in every copter since his first lift at Pendleton. It was like riding in a beer can. He hated to think how little that paper thinness would slow down a bullet. This was not practice; there might be ground fire for real. Sweat broke under his helmet-liner as thought became threat. What had they done in Nam? Sat on their helmets? He looked toward Cutford, half-wanting to ask him, just to hear someone talk who had been through it, but the black corporal was folded into the fuselage with his eyes closed, still scowling.
The helicopter settled, shaking like the stern of the Spiegel Grove when a sea lifted the tips of her screw out of the water. The men settled too, wedging themselves into the canvas seats, and the vibration sank into them, rattling their teeth, shaking them down like bags of loose sand into something denser, heavier, than simple flesh.
His head sank, nodding to the thrum that surged through the aircraft, and slowly his mouth sagged open.
When he jerked awake again he was disoriented, unable to judge how long he had been out. A minute? An hour? The window was just as dark, the predawn glimmer gone. The green glow of his watch dial gave him only numbers. He did not know the flying time to the LZ. He sought the others with his eyes; they looked back but words were impossible, communication was impossible; they were separated and shut off by a wall of sound so loud that it made everything silent.
Gesture, then. He caught Silkworth’s eye and held out his arm; tapped his watch; looked questioning. The sergeant held up six fingers. The motion went around the helicopter from man to man. Six minutes, he thought. Not long. And as if the pilot heard him the deck tilted back. The pitch of the rotors changed and the speed lodged in their bodies surged them into the straps as the aircraft slowed. With the sick feeling of descent came sudden activity. They checked their weapons, empty chambers but magazines full ready to feed. They cinched their packs, settled their helmets, the last motion hooking their left hands under the buckle of the seat belt. They glanced toward the rear of the helicopter, checking the ramp position, then glanced at each other.
The light went out. In the darkness they fell, faster now, the whish of the milling rotor coming clearly through the fuselage. He felt his throat close, his hands tighten on the straps. The engine—had it quit? It didn’t seem as loud. He couldn’t hear it!
He stared into the dark, mouth open, and waited for the crash.
The engine roared again, and they became heavy, heavy. The helmet bent his head. Something red shot past outside. Before he could think it through the chopper jolted sideways and then slammed down so hard it rapped his jaw on his chest. Motors whined aft and the clack of releasing buckles rippled along the line of men as they stood up.
Off the chopper. Down the ramp, through the man-filled darkness, turn soon, got to remember turn left turn LEFT. He felt without seeing the openness of the night, heard without seeing the deadly air-flutter from the tail rotor. The man behind shoved him and he turned left. He was down, and running. His boots thudded and swished through dry grass. Dust stung his face, kicked up by the blast. Through the thunder of engines he could hear the noncoms shouting. There was a bang behind him, a scream, but it only made him run faster. He panted through windy dark, caught up in the confusion of a night landing, the minutes when everyone ran in a dozen different directions and a squad leader earned his pay.
He was sprinting full out, rifle held high, looking around for the rest of the squad, when his boot hit a hole and he went down hard into the dirt, crashing down on his face. He lay there, half-out, the pack pushing him down like a man lying on top of him, and then heard it: the climbing whine of a helicopter coming in to land. At the same moment the ground lit up, bright, distinct, each blade of grass sharp and individual as a razor-edge. He twisted his head. They were landing lights, all right. He blinked up at them for an eternally long second, watching the three blazing lamps spread as the helo drifted down, the rotorblast pressing him into the dirt, thunder building in his ears, his muscles rigid, unable to move. He was frozen like a rabbit in headlights.
The hand grabbed his pack, left it, groped, and found him; grabbed him under the armpit and lifted him bodily onto his feet and then shoved him stumbling into a run. He heard the copter thud into the dust behind him. The tip blast shoved him along behind the big shadow that still had one arm under his. The shadow turned, and Cutford grinned in the landing lights like a black jack-o’-lantern.
“Thanks,” he shouted.
“You fuckhead, Oreo. Takin’ a nap on a LZ not my idea of smart soldierin’.”
“Ah, eat it,” he shouted, finding the grin sticking to his face, too. The corporal’s hand gripped his shoulder, fingers digging in, held it for a moment, and then released. “Les’ get the squad formed up,” Cutford shouted above the building roar of the second wave coming in behind them. “An’ get that perimeter out. Dawn comin’ up soon.”
He blinked, pulling his mind from what had just happened, and remembered the disposition. Marine units dug in the instant you ran far enough not to get landed on. They found Hernandez and then Harner. Then they ran into the infantry squad they had boarded with, part of the helo team, and Silkworth and Washman were with them. Silky took charge at once, starting their fire positions to the north of the LZ on a small rise. They began chunking at the dirt with their entrenching tools.
“You seen Dippy, man?”
“No.”
“No, man, I ain’t seen him since the debark.”
The light came while they dug, gray and pale and cool. Levering the spade beneath a rock, he raised his head to look around. The hills came first, black cuts in the graying sky, and then the men working beside him, and finally the hole. When he saw the tool in his hands he knew that it was dawn. The sergeants had linked the squads up left and right to form the perimeter and now as he tamped the pile flat in front of his firing position and propped his rifle on it he could look to either side and see men strung out along the rise. Behind them, the sound dulled by distance and somehow too by the coming of daylight, helos churned downward out of the sky, the patch team waving them in with the wands. Some of them carried gear, slung beneath in nets, and he could see piles of supplies beginning to build.
So this, he thought, is Lebanon. Again he had the feeling that he would never forget what he was seeing, that he would always be able to stand here again, be as he was right now, forever, just by remembering. It was that strong. He stretched, holding the tool, and breathed in the dry dusty air, the cool morning smells of soil and unknown trees, of a foreign land.
“We’re in clean,” said Hernandez, interrupting his thoughts. “I dint see one shot. Now why couldn’t we have took the mortar?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s crazy bullshit, that’s what it is.”
“Yeah.”
“Shut up and dig,” said Silkworth, pausing at the top of their holes. “This is an entrenchment? You’re gonna get your asses shot off. Deeper, you crud lovers, deeper. Like Lily says, I want you in all the way, you’ll break your neck if you fall off once I start.”
“Aye aye, Sarnt!”
“Yowzah, yowzah, Massa Silkwort’.”
“Bad news, guys,” said the sergeant, looking at all of them and none of them. “Dippy got hurt coming off the helo.”
“Hurt,” said Givens. “How bad? What do you mean, Silky?”
“That’s all I heard. Sorry. Now get that spade in the dirt.”
They dug and dug, clawing up the rocky soil, gritty dust and limestone, prying up grass cropped close by goats, and spread it out before them. Dug and spread. It grew rapidly brighter. The exec came by and passed a couple of words with them, told them hot coffee was coming up, flown in from the Guam.
“Hot coffee?” grunted Cutford. “In whose Marine Corps?”
“Just don’t get used to it,” said the officer.
“We be movin’ on inland, Lieutenant?” Washman asked him.
“That’s the word. Consolidate here and guard the road, be ready to continue east for the target area when transport comes up.”
“How’s the landing going at the beach?”
The officer shook his head.
“Sir—you heard anything about one of our guys, got hurt debarking? Name of Liebo?”
“He walked into a rotor. They flew him back. That’s all I know,” said the lieutenant, and went on.
They dug in silence for a while. “That’s got to be deep enough,” said the Washout at last, and squirmed down into his hole. “Can you see me from the front, Will?”
Givens obediently crossed ahead of the line, squatted down, and surveyed the position. “Nope. Not even the top of your helmet.”
“Good. Get in yours, I’ll check you.”
When they were satisfied with the position the squad squatted gratefully on the reverse slope of the hill, watching the helos offload another unit. “New boys,” said Silk-worth, glancing at them sideways.
“Not like the old Corps,” agreed Hernandez.
“Geez, it’s getting hot already. Where’d all that rain go? It quit as soon as we got here.”
“This is the Med, kid.”
“Sergeant. Muster over there with the Top. Got some word to pass.”
“Yes, sir.”
They sat and watched Silkworth jog off toward the helos, his pack slapping his ass as he ran. “Gonna move out soon, I bet,” said Washman. “Just when I got my hole dug.”
“Cigarette?” said Harner.
“No, thanks, Buck. You know I don’t smoke.”
“No harm offerin’.” Harner grinned slowly. “Wasn’t for these magnum cowboy killers, couldn’t hardly take the pressure ’round here.”
Givens nodded. They watched the knot of noncoms and officers. The sky brightened. The sun came into view for the first time, bursting in red-white flame across the low hills directly into their eyes. The light picked out the dust in the clear air, the brown haze of exhaust above them, making them blink and raise their arms and squint at it, as if it was something new, this morning sun.
The knot broke. “Gonna go for sure,” said Cutford, staring at the sergeant as he toiled up the hill, and they all rose, dusting off their utilities.
Silkworth, as he went up to them, was looking east. Following his eyes, Givens saw in the fresh daylight that the hills they had landed on were only foothills, and that beyond them mountains stood tan against the sky. Tan, and above that the white glisten of snow.
“Holy shit, Sergeant! We goin’ over those?”
But all he said, looking to the sunrise, was “Stand easy. They’ll let us know.”