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

His nose lifted slightly and I watched the nostrils flare as he sniffed the air.

Suddenly, the hogs panicked and started running in frenzied circles and chaotic zigzags. One almost brushed my pant leg as it streaked by at a hundred miles an hour. Had it crashed into me, the animal easily could’ve broken my leg.

After twenty seconds of disorder, the herd disappeared, leaving behind some screeching birds and some hammering hearts. I looked at Mr. Schrader, who was wiping his brow and grinning at me.

“That one almost took off your nuts,” he whispered, then motioned for me to take the point and resume the patrol.

We reconed about a hundred meters when Mr. Schrader stopped me. He had us rest again for ten minutes, which irritated me. The area we were in was supposedly not hot for enemy activity; therefore, we should have moved a little faster. Thank goodness we didn’t have three or four thousand meters to recon that day because we’d have never gotten it done at that slow rate.

Three pit stops and almost two hours later, we finally reached the Song Dan Xay, a river that was five to six hundred meters across. I moved another forty meters south along the bank and found a small stream branching off to the west. This was where we were hoping the VC would float a sampan or two sometime in the next twenty hours. If they would cooperate, we planned to detonate twenty pounds of C-4 explosives beneath them and flip all boatmen into the water. Moses and I, the designated swimmers, then would enter the stream, with our K-bar knives at the ready, to capture one or two prisoners.

While the others held back, I slowly reconed the bank of the stream. I found lots of deer tracks, but no signs of humanity. When I made my way back far enough so Mr. Schrader could see me, I waved him on.

It took but a few minutes to set up our ambush overlooking the stream. Flynn, with the M-60 machine gun, took the right flank, and McCollum, toting the M-79 grenade launcher, positioned himself five meters from Flynn. Mr. Schrader settled in next, with Markel dropping a few meters behind him into a thicket with the radio. Both of them had M-16 rifles. Brown found a hiding place just off the bank with his M-16, followed by Moses, also carrying an M-16. I secured the left flank position with my steady girlfriend in my arms.

Once we were well situated, Mr. Schrader signaled to Moses and me to plant the haversack of explosives in the water. As we’d rehearsed, Moses and I walked down the bank opposite the flow of the stream. I hoisted the haversack, which was much heavier with weights than during our practice, while Moses strung out the electrical firing line that extended to Mr. Schrader’s location.

When the firing line reached its full length, Moses and I put on our fins and slipped into the water. We swam until we ended up smack-dab in front of Mr. Schrader, in the middle of the stream, where we dropped the weighted haversack and watched it disappear as it sank toward the bottom. Then we swam back to shore and retook our places on the bank of the stream.

For a short while, I felt refreshed and invigorated, as I was soaked with cool water. But as the temperature rose, my wet cammo clothing and long johns warmed and bonded tightly to my skin. I became itchy and uncomfortable, but there was nothing I could do but sit through a long drying-out period.

As the daylight hours slowly passed, I got pretty bored. Dark clouds had moved in and the day was dismal. Nothing interesting happened to speed things along. Due to habit, I found myself looking at my watch about every hour, but each time, I was reminded that the watch had stopped working the previous afternoon. I was forced to guess at the time of day.

Sometime around 1600 hours, a greenish-blue duck flew by just above the water. I followed it with my eyes until it disappeared. A minute later, the duck came back and landed in the stream just twenty meters out from my position. It quacked six times, sounding comparable to a dinner bell to me. I took a can of C rats and a canteen from my backpack, and I ate while watching the duck bob for fish.

During the next couple of hours, Mamma-san Nature did her thing. She slowly hung a curtain of darkness while gently easing the tide in on us. At 1930 hours, according to Moses’s watch, we were sitting in two feet of water. Then it started raining hard. For two hours, the tiny missiles buffeted our bodies.

Just as the rain finally began slacking off, I heard voices fifty to seventy meters upstream. I alerted the others, but when the rain stopped a couple minutes later, so did the voices. Dead silence dropped on us like the closing of a coffin.

With no visible moon providing light, I couldn’t see very well. I did my best to look over the dark water, seeking the black shape of a sampan.

Suddenly my heart leapt into my mouth as an elongated object floated in front of me. Sampan! I thought. I was just about to jerk three times on the communication line between me and Moses when I realized I was seeing only a big log. I slumped back a little from my stiff, upright posture and took a deep breath.

Just as I was feeling relief over the fact that I hadn’t sent out a false alarm, the line tied to my right wrist was pulled three times. Moses had mistaken the log for a sampan. Before I could do anything about it, Mr. Schrader set off the charge in the water, which erupted right where we had dropped it. I couldn’t see how the explosion affected the log, as it was too dark.

In the few seconds of silence