Both Haber and DeLong were still working on the obstinate tinfoil packages containing the little heat tablets. Burke pointed to their canteens. “That base water in those canteens?”
They looked confused at the question.
“Did you fill those canteens at An Hoa or from the stream we’ve been wading through all day?”
“An Hoa,” they said in unison.
“Okay, that water is safe. Don’t drink the water you get out here unless you treat it with halizone for a half hour. Do you need some?” DeLong dug into a pocket and came up with a little brown bottle with a screw top. “Good,” Burke said. “If you’re smart, the next time you write home you’ll ask your folks to send you packages of Kool-Aid. It won’t kill the halizone taste, but it covers up some of the ugly.”
Doc Brede moved along the line of resting Marines, stopping at each position for a few seconds. He was still chewing on a flaky white roll wrapped around a slice of ham when he reached Burke and the replacements. “I hear the lieutenant gave you a promotion,” he said with a wry smile.
Burke kept stirring the tin of turkey loaf bits on his makeshift stove. “Of all the things I can remember wanting lately, being squad leader wasn’t one of them.”
The doc kept smiling and chewing. “You’ve got no problems. Just ask yourself ‘what would Reach do?’”
Burke tested the temperature of his turkey with a tentative spoonful. “All I want is to do what he’s doing right now.”
“You and every other swinging dick, me included. Hey, tell your squad to change their socks before we move out.”
Burke swallowed a bigger bite of turkey and washed it down with a swig from his canteen, his sour expression an outraged gourmet’s review of the taste. It was the first time anyone had referred to the squad as his, and he was surprised at the weight the words carried. “What makes you think anyone has dry socks?” he said.
“Well, tell them to wring out what they have and switch.” He looked down at the new guys working on their meals and raised his voice. “You two, hang your wet socks on your pack straps until they dry,” he said. “Change them as often as you can. Whoever said that an army travels on its stomach was full of shit.” He noticed Haber’s tin of ham and limas and handed him some processed cheese spread. “Stir this in. Maybe you can kill those motherfuckers before they kill you.” The doc took another bite of his ham roll and moved on.
Lieutenant Diehl squatted over his own boiling tin of beans and wieners while chewing on a cheese-coated cracker. The sergeant stood nearby, shoveling spoonfuls of chopped ham and eggs into his mouth as quickly as he could, because the stink of hot ham and eggs could change your mind about eating them if you lingered. Bronsky was sitting on the ground leaning against his radio, slurping juice from a tin of peaches. He tipped the tin up, draining the last drops. “I’ve got two pound cakes I’ll trade for a fruit cocktail,” he said to anyone within earshot. Fruit cocktail was the most coveted tin in the combat meals, so there were no takers. He made a show of stuffing a little pack of C-rat Winstons into an accessory bag stuffed with Kents and Chesterfields. Everyone knew that he didn’t smoke, and also that as long as they were far from the PX, time was on his side.
The lieutenant had his grid map laid out at his feet, its OD canvas case holding it flat. The plastic-coated map showed all the grids with the coded thrust points marked. He waved Sergeant Blackwell over. His finger wandered vaguely over the map above their present position. “You ever hear of any units working the Arizona across the river for five days and not butting heads with the 20th VC Battalion?”
The sergeant squatted next to the lieutenant. “No. From what I understand, they always make it a point to show how jealous they can be when it comes to this mosquito-infested shit hole.”
The lieutenant nodded and absently tapped the map. “Right. And yet here we are, alone.”
“I don’t think we’re alone,” the sergeant said. “I guess we just ain’t wandered close enough to anything they care about protecting.”
The lieutenant stared at the map. “Maybe. It just seems crazy to me. Something is going on.”
Sergeant Blackwell ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “What seems crazy to me is one platoon of Marines hoping to piss off a battalion of VC. I’m not so sure I feel comfortable grabbing that tiger’s tail.”
Lieutenant Diehl glanced around, making sure the Marines within earshot were occupied with their meals. “We’re an example of firepower on tap, Sergeant. We pull the tiger into the open, and superior technology rains a shitstorm down on its head.”
The sergeant seemed skeptical. “We just have to hope that shit can rain faster than the tiger eats.”
Diehl pointed to a spot in the foothills west of one thrust point marked with an automobile designation. “I want to be here by nightfall, about four points off Cadillac.”
The sergeant looked at the spot, calculated the distance in his mind, and nodded. “Not a problem, sir.” He watched as the lieutenant slowly dragged his finger east. It jumped foothills effortlessly, flew across marshes, skimmed rice paddies, and dragged through villages on its way to the blue line that would be the Song Thu Bon, and beyond the river, the relative safety of An Hoa. He noticed that the first village the finger passed through out on the valley floor was just north of a small body of water and was peppered with the locations of a number of dwellings. It was clearly marked Huu Chanh 1.
After digging his seabag out of the 1st Platoon pile in the storage tent, Strader soaked in the shower until every stain from the Arizona was washed away. He lathered and scrubbed, and scrubbed again, until his skin felt abraded and new. He changed into a laundered set of jungle utilities and switched his decrepit boots for a pair of Corcoran jump boots that he’d kept wrapped in a set of stateside utilities in the bottom of the seabag. The all-leather boots felt stiff and unforgiving compared with the supple old jungle boots that had long ago conformed to the contours of his feet. He remembered a year ago when the Corcorans felt comfortable. But like the rest of him, his feet had undergone a change. Not that anyone would notice by looking. It took the Corcorans to remind him that a change was there.
Third Platoon’s hooch was empty now with everyone manning the bunkers west of the runway. Strader went out the back door to a piss tube buried in the ground about twenty-five yards from the building. He always felt self-conscious urinating in the open. He looked across the runway to the line of bunkers, and beyond the wire to the wild country surrounding the village of Duc Duc. All of the brush and trees outside the concertina seemed to promise that someone was there looking back. He hoped they weren’t looking over the barrel of a rifle. It would be a long shot to his position at the tube, but when you’re standing there with your fly open, you can’t shrug away the feeling of being exposed. And he knew something about long shots.
The fading light was turning the countryside into an ominous gray mass of shadows and made the runway look like a long, black scar. The danger you could see coming at you in the daytime you now had to hear or sense. As he watched the Ong Thu Mountains vanish into the distant darkness, Strader felt guilty that he was feeling vulnerable here inside the wire while his platoon faced another