the heavy AK would climb, and this would be a problem firing downhill.
The newly awakened sentry aimed blindly into the dark and waited until sounds in the trees below drew his barrel to its target. Sau was right. There was movement.
They waited motionlessly, letting the sounds pull their rifle sights like divining rods are pulled to water. Their fingers hovered over triggers and the butt plates pressed tightly into their shoulders. Their heads moved as if on gimbals, ears jockeying for better reception. The sounds were close, but they didn’t seem to be coming any closer. And then, suddenly, the movement was gone, leaving only the squealing conversations of wildlife and the pounding hearts of the two NVA, who now had to determine their aim by memory alone.
“Luu-dan,” the sentry said, the word barely audible on his breath, and Sau felt the wooden post of a hand grenade touch his knee.
Sau pushed it away. “Nguyen,” he said, “now,” and the sentry evaporated into the night, soundless as a wraith.
The rising moon found random openings in the cloud cover and shot beams of gray light through the canopy, projecting a faint and flickering show on the jungle floor. Sau watched down the barrel of his rifle as the interplay of moon and cloud repeatedly gave the gift of vision and then swept it away.
The sentry was back within minutes with Nguyen close on his heels. He resumed the vigil while Nguyen and Sau moved behind the malodorous tree.
“Do we have trouble, Sau?” Nguyen asked, trying to hide the apprehension in his voice.
“There was definite movement that stopped on the mountain just below us,” Sau said, watching the play of moonlight across Nguyen’s face.
“How close?”
Sau moved his head in closer for emphasis. “Twenty meters, maybe less.”
Nguyen halved the volume of his whisper. “Just twenty meters?”
“They could be closer,” Sau said.
Nguyen stood silently, letting the impact of the information penetrate his sleep-fogged mind. Recriminations flooded in. They should have moved during the storm. They should have moved in the dark. They wouldn’t be here now if they had only kept moving.
“How many are there?” he asked.
“Not many,” Sau said, wiping sweat from his eyes. “Probably two. I think it is a watch post for their unit. We work in pairs. They work in pairs.”
“And you say they are as close as twenty meters?”
“Or closer.”
“Then their main unit is not far,” Nguyen said, more a voiced thought than a communication.
A prolonged break in the clouds bathed the undergrowth in dancing shards of light, and Sau peeked around the tree. “I think we will find out how far in the morning.”
“We cannot be here in the morning,” Nguyen said firmly.
“If we move now they will hear,” Sau said.
Nguyen turned the options over in his mind. “So we can fight them now in the dark or wait and fight them in the light of morning. Either way, we will have carried these weapons all this way for nothing.”
Sau glanced around the tree again. “There may be another way,” he said.
Nguyen grasped Sau’s shoulder and pulled him around. “If you have an idea, you won’t ever find me more willing to listen.”
“If their sentries weren’t so close we could move on, and there is a chance the main unit would not hear us.”
“But they are close,” Nguyen said.
Sau drew his thumb across his own neck under his chin. “Then we change that.”
Nguyen seized on the idea like a drowning man to a lifeline. “It will have to be done silently, without alerting the other Americans.”
“It will be difficult,” Sau said.
“But it can be done?”
Sau shrugged resignedly. “Do we have a choice?”
The three Marines settled on the flattest piece of real estate they could find—six feet of level ground with a couple of small trees that didn’t eat up the space. “Who wants the first watch?” Tanner asked, making himself comfortable with his back to one of the trees. “Nobody? Okay, I’ll take it.” The first watch was the easiest because everybody was still alert and the dark and the boredom hadn’t had time to work on the need for sleep. In three or four hours it would be a different story. “Hey, new guy. Do you have a wristwatch?”
DeLong moved in close. “Yeah, I have a watch. And the name’s DeLong.”
“Okay, Deeeee Long. Give it here.”
DeLong hesitated. Someone he didn’t know or trust was asking him for his watch, and it made him leery. It wasn’t a family heirloom or even a very expensive watch—his father had bought it for him at the Sears in Milwaukee—but it was something from home, something the Marines had not issued. It was a connection, one he did not want to lose.
“Come on,” Tanner said impatiently. “You’ll get it back when the Chief wakes you.”
DeLong reluctantly unbuckled the band and handed over the watch.
The watch face was black with white numerals and hands, and Tanner held it out and rocked the crystal in a shaft of moonlight. “This’ll work. I’ll wake the Chief in two hours. He’ll wake you in four. I would give you the second shift, but then you would have to wake the Chief, and that can be tricky. Who knows what he would do in the night to someone he didn’t recognize. Right, Chief?”
A few feet away, the Chief cleared a spot so he could stretch out. The ground was wet, and he lay back on his flak jacket and balanced his head on his upturned helmet. It wasn’t comfortable, but it would do. He didn’t answer.
DeLong spread out his flak jacket and lay down on his side. He wrapped his arms around his body, tucking his hands into his armpits, trying to stay warm. His body heat had baked some of the wet out of his clothes, but they were still damp enough to make him shiver when a breeze invaded, or when he thought of where he was. He couldn’t imagine being more miserable.
Tanner sat cross-legged against a tree with his rifle on his lap. He tilted his head back and sniffed. “Damn. It smells like something died around here,” he said.
The lieutenant reported his position to the com shack in An Hoa, calculating the distance and direction from his last thrust point and making sure the 155 batteries had 1st Platoon’s grid coordinates marked on their maps. It paid to be able to get quick fire support in case things went wrong, and in the Arizona, they tended to go wrong in a hurry.
The two M60 machine guns were in
