The first sergeant jerked his head toward the other end of the mess hall as though Strader’s odor was giving him spasms. “Keep moving, and make sure that shower happens real soon.”
Strader finally started to move again. At the end of the sergeants’ table, Corporal Pusic looked up from his tray with a disdainful glance at Strader’s condition, as though he hadn’t seen it earlier. There was plenty of empty space on either side of him, but Strader just nodded and moved on.
Halfway through the mess hall, a squad from Golf’s 3rd Platoon was in from the lines and wolfing down their meals like starving dogs. Strader slipped in next to a lance corporal with the ace of spades drawn on the back of his flak jacket and a mouth bulging with half-chewed strip steak.
“Reach,” he mumbled, spraying little bits of meat across the table.
Strader already had his face buried in his upturned canteen cup of ice water, and rivulets of cool heaven were running down his neck to join the rainwater in his T-shirt. He gulped and gulped until the cold made it too painful to swallow. His cup hit the table with a clunk that sent a splash of ice over the rim. “How’s it goin’ Ace?” he said. “The Crotch treatin’ you right?”
“The Corps couldn’t love me more if I was Chesty Puller.”
Strader sliced off a piece of meat and forked it into his mouth. Ace finished chewing his wad of steak and started to shovel in another load. “Doc tells me you’re too short to talk to.”
“No, but you’ll have to talk fast,” Strader said, gulping more water. “Things cool here?”
Ace had to chew awhile before the chunk of steak in his mouth was small enough to talk around. “Chuck’s been probing the line on and off, especially on the north end of the runway. Nothing serious, though. They just fire off a few rounds every once in a while to make sure we aren’t getting any sleep. They did light up the CAP unit in the vill a couple of nights ago. They had a mad minute going until 2nd Platoon went to the rescue. Other than that it’s been samey same.”
Ace watched with amusement as Strader drained the rest of his water then crunched a shard of ice between his teeth. “You must be really short to be worried about being on this side of the wire. How much time you got?”
Strader added a spoonful of corn to the fragments of ice he was chewing. “Three and a wake-up.”
Ace washed down his steak with a gulp of coffee and showed Strader his best grin, studded with bits of strip steak. “I guess you’ll be sleeping in your flak gear tonight.”
“I ain’t gonna get twitchy, Ace. I got nothing to worry about with you on line, right?”
The squad from 3rd Platoon had to get back to the perimeter so other Marines could get a shot at a hot meal. They gathered their gear and pulled away from the table. Ace had to finish his beans and coffee on the fly. “You know I’ll kick ass, Reach. But if they get past me, you’re on your own.” He caught up to the squad dunking their trays in the rinse barrels outside, and they disappeared in a splash of puddles.
Strader went back to his food, taking his time cutting his steak into bite-sized pieces and chewing slowly. He was in no hurry. He could take all the time he wanted. He could go through the line again and sit until the mess sergeant threw him out. And he would have done that, but he wanted to use the showers while it was still daylight. He just hated being caught in the dark in nothing but a towel and flip-flops.
First Sergeant Gantz leaned down the table toward Corporal Pusic and cocked his head in Strader’s direction. “You know that Marine, Pusic?” he said.
Corporal Pusic turned in his seat to look at Strader as though he had no idea who the sergeant was referring to. “Oh, yeah, that’s Corporal Strader.”
“Is he one of yours?”
Corporal Pusic hesitated before answering, his mind racing to search every possible scenario his answer could create that would cause Sergeant Gantz to bring a world of hurt into his life. He was stymied. “Yeah. He’s Golf, 1st Platoon.” He couldn’t imagine that anything Strader did would reflect badly on him. But he also knew the vagaries and unpredictability of sergeants. He waited for the other shoe to drop, but the sergeant just rapped on the table with his knuckles and went back to his coffee, leaving Pusic to feign an inordinate level of interest in his meal. He didn’t want to do anything to provoke the wrath of the sergeants. He had cultivated a very beneficial relationship with them. They were especially useful when the officers of Golf Company came to him with a problem or an assignment. And when problems were solved and assignments were successfully completed, the officers saw Pusic as an indispensable cog in the company wheel. Although the credo of the Corps was that every Marine was a rifleman first, Pusic wanted to be needed right where he was, and he didn’t want anything to tip the delicate balance away from that. If he had anything to do with it, no one would ever even consider that he might be useful elsewhere.
The drumming of the rain on the roof slowed to a few scattered taps, and the runoff trickled to a stop. Marines who had been in no hurry to finish while it poured took the opportunity to clear their tables and head back to their areas. Pusic watched them through the screens as they went, picking their way around the larger puddles, leisurely skirting the surrounding buildings. He could walk back to the company office now without getting soaked, so he rose to go. He turned to look for Strader, but the table was empty. Things were looking up.
As the storm rolled away across the An Hoa Valley, the NVA troops bundled their waterproof covers and lashed them to the bamboo poles and the barrel of the recoilless—anyplace where they could provide a cushion for weary shoulders. The jungle canopy continued to leak the dregs of the storm, but not enough to convince Nguyen to delay departure. The Americans were somewhere in the valley, and he was anxious to move out of their reach. His orders demanded that he stay away from them.
Nguyen spread a map across his knees as the others crouched around him. “We are here,” he said. His finger followed the contours of the mountains north and stopped west of Huu Chanh 1. “We will rest here tonight, and tomorrow we will push all the way to Minh Tan and boat across the Song Vu Gia.” His finger stopped on the village near the river. It looked like a great distance. “Tomorrow will be a difficult day. I suggest we cover as much ground as we can before nightfall to ease our pains tomorrow.”
Truong pointed to the large circle drawn on the map that encompassed the entire Ong Thu mountain range and covered most of the valley from the Que Son Mountains to well beyond the confluence of the Song Vu Gia and the Song Thu Bon. “Is that circle the place the Americans call the Arizona?” he asked.
“This circled area is the home of our R-20th Doc Lap Battalion,” Nguyen corrected him. “Thanks to them, we will have a safer passage here.” Nguyen folded the map and waved it in front of him like an emperor indicating the expanse of his domain. “This is Doc Lap’s hunting ground. Here intruders pay a bloody penalty for trespassing.”
Truong and Pham exchanged glances. “I hope they know we aren’t the intruders,” Pham said.
Nguyen rose and began strapping on his heavy gear. “This place has no secrets from the 20th,” he said. “Every footprint here is at their pleasure. The Americans would do well to remember that.”
As Nguyen adjusted his load, Pham and Truong helped the others lift the heavy machine gun and situate the poles on their shoulders. “And yet the Americans are here,” Truong whispered.
The weapon bearers shifted their loads until they settled into a reasonably comfortable position and the NVA column moved north.
The Marines wove a jagged line just east of the Ong Thu foothills. When the rain stopped, 1st Platoon stopped as well. Clustered in small