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

footlocker, I kicked off my coral booties and crawled into my bed. I wrote an upbeat letter to my parents, choosing to mention Katsma’s death only in passing. I didn’t want to upset my parents and cause them to worry, so I wrote mostly of pleasant and humorous things, like Muck’s mooning me. McCollum, I was sure, would be happy to hear me say his moon-job was something I considered pleasant, but there in the Rung Sat Special Zone, it was, comparatively speaking. Compared to the sight of someone’s blown-out brains, a healthy, bare ass looked damn good.

After half an hour, I finished the letter. I felt sleep touching my eyes with his invisible hand, so I decided to catch him this time around.

The next thing I knew, Flynn was waking me. “Hawk, it’s 0330. We board the LCM in thirty minutes.”

“My watch quit,” I sputtered, thrashing at my mosquito net with my arms. I stumbled out of bed and got dressed in my cammo clothing. Then I made a head call and washed my face and brushed my teeth.

As I swished a mouthful of water, I looked at my face in the mirror over the sink. I was wide awake now, ready to resume my profession as a swamp warrior. I had no smile for the mirror, only a glare. Guerilla warfare brought out the ferocity in a man. Confronting the enemy deep in his own territory demanded a bastard, not a good ol’ boy. Believe me, my face that morning did nothing to bolster the image of a young and handsome gentleman.

My gear was ready, so I gathered everything in my arms and carried it to the dock. I boarded Mighty Moe with my teammates.

At 0400 hours, we moved down the Long Tau. The sky was black. No moon or stars were visible. With nothing to see, I lay down against the starboard bulkhead and closed my eyes. If I could manage to fall asleep, I would get two and a half hours of shut-eye before we arrived at our insertion point.

The hum of Mighty Moe’s engines seemed loud at first, but the more I relaxed, the less distracting was the sound. After a few minutes, I even relished the steadiness of it. Steady, even, solid, consistent. Just like I someday wanted my life to be. Like I hoped it would be. For that kind of life, though, I would need to change, and I wasn’t sure I could. I’d need to give up the risks and life-threatening dangers that I’d always gone for. The only cure, I supposed, was to grow up. I was finding that the Rung Sat Special Zone had a way of expediting the process.

I gradually slipped into semiconsciousness. While I was visiting there, worrisome things took a back seat to delightful visions of Scotland, Texas. I saw myself riding a black horse in front of my little house on the hill. It was a splendid sight.

When I awoke from my dreaming, I found I was riding black waves in a black world. Hello, Vietnam. Yes, it’s you again.

With nothing for me to do, my choice was either to go back to sleep or to stay awake. I chose sleep, but I stayed awake. That’s how it went sometimes.

After what seemed a long while, the sky started to glow ever so slowly. Dawn had never missed an engagement yet. She’d been late a few times, like the early morning I had heard a whitetail buck horning a small tree right in front of my blind, and I couldn’t see squat until he was gone, but she always showed up eventually. Eventually became then as our squad prepared to insert.

We made a fake insertion first, then a second. The third time was the charm. As usual, I jumped off the boat ramp first, plopping into the mud of the Song Dinh Ba riverbank. The mud felt cool on my left hand, which I’d stuck out to avoid a nose dive, but I didn’t pause to savor the experience. Instead, I scrambled ahead into the thick brush. My six teammates followed.

I went ten meters into thick nipa palm and waited in an expanse of skunkweed. Lieutenant (jg) Schrader came up beside me, and we waited a while. My ears were tuned to the jungle, listening for sounds of human activity.

Ten minutes later, after hearing nothing but distant birds greeting the rising sun, Mr. Schrader motioned me to lead out. The going got tough immediately. Thick, tangled brush clawed at my every move. The ground was a mire, sucking at my boots. Mobs of mosquitos sucked at my blood.

After only a hundred meters, Mr. Schrader wanted me to stop. He whispered to me that Flynn, who was lugging the heavy M-60 machine gun, was having a hard time. He needed a rest.

I knew from the previous day’s briefing that we had another 450 meters of that dense vegetation before we reached our ambush site on a small tributary branching off the Song Dan Xay. At the slow rate we were advancing, that meant another two hours on patrol. Two hours that would feel like twenty.

As we waited, I looked at the hog tracks that were everywhere around me. A stick cracked ahead of me and I automatically pointed Sweet Lips in the direction of the sound. The safety was already off and my index finger lightly caressed the smooth trigger.

Another twig broke. My heart stepped up its drumming. I glanced at Mr. Schrader, who had his M-16 aimed toward the oncoming mystery.

The snapping hurried closer, and I saw movement in the brush only thirty feet away. A low-standing, dark-colored shape materialized, and another appeared beside it. As the objects came closer, I recognized them to be wild boars. Five or six more followed the first two. Appearing to weigh fifty to sixty pounds, they looked a lot like the javelinas back home.

When the hogs closed to within ten feet, the lead boar stopped and stared at me.