Death in the Jungle Gary Smith (mobi reader txt) 📖

us through the various exercises, and he did a good job out front. Contrary to my usual exuberance during PT, I just went through the motions; my mind was on Bolivar, and I was upset with myself for my apparent carelessness in properly securing the cage door.

After almost thirty minutes of sweating through the workout, Mr. Meston announced the Saigon trip would begin at 1000 hours, then called for us to jog twice around the perimeter of the ten-acre base. I was happy for the run, as someone might spot my snake.

With everyone breaking into a scamper, I loudly broadcast my predicament and asked my teammates to watch for my, pet.

“Holler if you see him!” I directed.

“I’ll scream with delight, like the house maid did last week when she saw my private stock!” McCollum blew from behind me.

“Knowin’ you, you were as limp as a snake!” Funkhouser teased him.

“You’ve never seen me coiled up and ready to strike!” McCollum retaliated. “That’s a sight to behold! The eighth wonder of the world!”

Katsma and I jogged a little faster, joining the others at the front of the pack.

“The ninth and tenth wonders are in my family, too!” Muck yelled after us.

“What are they?” Kats yelled back.

“My wife’s bazookas! They’re awesome! I call one Victor and the other Charlie, and I do love the way they torture me!”

Laughing, we ran away from the slower runners. McCollum was still getting guffaws behind us, but his words were now unintelligible.

Katsma soon made a move to take the lead over everyone, and even though breakfast was still heavy in my stomach, I couldn’t help but go with him. The lead was what I was used to. It was where runners like Kats and me just naturally ended up. Not that we were so great—we simply loved to run, to stride out, to make tracks.

That morning, the rush of wind and the feeling of strength was stimulating. I almost forgot about Bolivar’s being lost as Kats and I intermittently challenged one another with short bursts of speed as we circled the base. When we completed the run, however, Bolivar was all I thought about.

Sweating profusely, Kats and I made a beeline for the showers. As we approached them, Kats pointed toward the Seabees barracks.

“There’s a snake!” he exclaimed.

I looked and saw the snake, but it was easy for me to tell that it wasn’t mine. This snake was more than two feet long and had different colored stripes.

“That’s a viper,” I informed Katsma, who concurred. We watched as the venomous snake slid through the new door leading into the barracks.

“Should we go warn the Seabees?” Kats wondered aloud. We looked at each other. Smiles broke across our faces.

“Naw!” we sang in unison.

“Viper bites are rarely fatal,” I stated as we headed for the showers.

After a short shower, I walked back to my barracks wearing only my UDT swim trunks. Just outside the open door, I threw my wet towel on top of a scurrying, three-inch shrew and gathered it up. Bolivar would have breakfast awaiting him, should he come home.

I entered my cubicle and deposited the shrew in Bolivar’s cage, making sure to fasten the latch. I slid the cage under my bed, then dug a pair of Levi’s jeans and a sports shirt out of my footlocker. I’d wear those clothes to Saigon.

I checked my Rolex. It was only 0835 hours, so I decided to read. I draped the fresh clothes over the locker, then crawled under the mosquito netting with Louis L’Amour’s The First Fast Draw that I had received from my mother a few days earlier.

I should go look for Bolivar, I told myself. Yes, in a half hour, I would. Give him some time to surface. First, I thought I’d get lost myself in the story.

I was lost only twenty minutes when I was snapped back to reality by someone shouting curses from outside the barracks. I listened more intently and I realized it was Flynn yelling something about a snake.

Funkhouser rushed into the cubicle. “Flynn’s got Bolivar cornered in the john!”

I dropped my book on the bed and flew out from beneath the mosquito net. A few seconds’ sprint brought me into the lavatory, where I found Flynn in his under-shorts and wearing sandals, swearing and holding his right index finger in his left hand.

“Your damn snake bit me!” he informed me, showing me the wound. His finger had been punctured slightly.

“Where is he?” I asked, unconcerned about Flynn’s little bite.

“Look in that first stall,” Flynn directed, then he moaned. I entered the stall and spied Bolivar’s tail behind the toilet. Looking around the other side, I saw my pet’s head, placed my hand behind it, and then grabbed. I pulled Bolivar out of his hiding place.

Holding the snake with both hands, I started out of the latrine.

“Thanks for finding him, Flynn.”

“Next time I’ll kill that little gook!” my teammate called after me.

I chuckled. “You’ll have to stand in line!”

Several other SEALs, having heard the commotion, met me outside the john.

“Flynn got bit on his finger,” I announced, continuing toward the barracks.

Katsma walked beside me. “That’s what we get for not telling the Seabees about that viper. What goes around, comes around.”

I grinned. “At least it was Flynn who got the come-around, and not us. Hoo-yah!”

I put Bolivar in his cage with his new companion, whom I’d dubbed “Squeaky.”

I crawled back into my bed and read another thirty pages, then dressed for the Saigon trip.

At 0955 hours, thirteen SEALs from Foxtrot Platoon, along with Lieutenant Salisbury and Mojica, our boat support buddy, assembled near the front gate and watched as Leading Petty Officer Pearson drove up in a late model Chevy pickup truck. A previous SEAL platoon had stolen the truck from the U.S. Army on a street in Saigon, where it had been parked, looking very olive drab, a few months earlier. Now it was very black, with the false license number 93-4127 painted on the doors.

There being nothing quite as