Pete rotated. Pete left Vegas. Pete cut the Barb cord. Wayne rotated. Stanton worked in Saigon. Laurent and Chuck worked in Laos.

Pete detached Flash-4/65-strict orders: Hit the Gulf. Hit exile camps. Scout for good troops.

Pete detached Mesplиde-4/65-strict orders: Hit the U.S. Hit the South. Scout gun dealers out.

Bob Relyea left Laos-5/65-Bob Relyea hit Mississippi. Bob was Fed now. Bob did snitch work. It was klandestine.

Chuck to follow Bob. Chuck to hit Houston. Chuck to scout guns. Chuck to scout Gulf-close-close to Mississippi. Close to Mesplиde and pal Bob.

Chuck snickered to Bob. Bob snickered to Chuck. They snickered contrapuntal. They snickered through Bob's big farewell.

They implied mischief. They indulged wordplay. They inferred klownery. Birmingham, Alabama. Really BOMBingham. Bogalusa-tee-hee-BOMBalusa.

Bob split for Fed work. Chuck changed roommates. Chuck bunked with Laurent Guйry now. Chuck bugged him. Chuck hassled him. Chuck harangued him:

With Klan klaptrap. With klownish klaims. With klaims of krossburns to kome.

Rotations all-Dallas to Vegas-Dallas to Vietnam. Grad-school hijinx and reunions.

Chuck shot. Chuck shot from the knoll. Mesplиde shot Oswald's gun. Flash and Laurent stood in Boyd's team. They got scuttled pre-hit.

Rotations-Saigon to the Gulf-the Gulf to Cuba. Flash is Cuban. Flash is dark. Flash could get in.

The plan:

Flash goes in. Flash charts resistance. Flash finds good men. Flash smuggles them out. Flash boats them in. Flash feeds Guйry and Mesplиde.

They've got a shack. It's Gulf-close. They've got electrodes. They torture the men. They test their balls. They ensure their loyalty.

Rotations-Cuba to the Gulf-the Gulf to Vietnam. _Bigggggggg_ U.S. troop numbers.

Stanton logged said numbers. Stanton logged provocations. Stanton vibed a long war.

The Cong hits Pleiku. Eight Yankees die. LBJ reacts. Air strikes: Operation Flaming Dart.

The Cong hits Qui Nhon. Twenty-one Yankees die. LBJ reacts. More air strikes: Flaming Dart II.

U.S. troops arrive-"advisors"-two Marine battalions. More air strikes: Operation Rolling Thunder.

Two battalions arrive-logistical troops-20,000 men. They get deployed. They get dispersed. They get detached to Marv units.

Firefights. Dead Yanks. Incoming rotations. Buildups-incremental-40,000 men per.

Troops hit Saigon. Troops R R. Troop numbers swell. Long war good. Kadre like it. Buildup most boocoo.

Wayne lived in Saigon. Wayne lived in his lab. Wayne said _his_ fucking world swelled. More people. More noise. More songs up his vents. More Marvs. More O-heads. More whores.

More cover. More white horse. More money.

Stanton laundered profits. Stanton fed Pete. Pete fed Mesplиde. Mesplиde bought righteous _guns_.

.50-calibers/Ithacas/BARs/antitank guns.

Flash found a troop site. It was Gulf-close and gooood. It was near Port Sulphur, Louisiana. It housed sixty troopers-Cubano shitkickers all.

Mesplиde dropped some guns off. The shitkickers roared. Pete rotated through. Pete dug on the troops. Pete dug their maneuvers.

The troopers were hard-ons. The troopers were _trиs_ hard. The troopers were _trиs sanguinaire_.

Pete rotated. Pete hit Saigon. Pete met Stanton's CIA crew. Six men plus Stanton-all Cubafied.

They talked Cuba. They talked ops. They talked polygraph tests. They'd be mandatory and random. They'd go kadre-wide. Let's ID and whack traitors. Let's uproot thieves. Let's assure loyalty.

Stanton flew to Laos. Stanton brought his poly machine. Pete tested. Pete tested clean. Tran tested. Tran tested clean.

Stanton stayed for a visit. Stanton watched the spring burn.

Guards unshackled slaves. Slaves piled brush. Guards formed a fire brigade. They stacked the piles. They positioned them-one per stalk row.

Slaves filled drums with propane gas. Guards dipped torches. Guards whooped. Guards lit torches. Guards torched brush.

The fields burned. The sky flared. The fields burned all night. Guards cheered. Slaves cheered. Tiger Kamp cinderized.

Ash blew. Ash settled. Ash nourished kamp-wide.

Stanton loved it. Stanton stayed. Stanton stayed for the Clay-Liston fight. Chuck rigged a hookup-closed-circuit shit-a feed off MACV in Saigon.

Sonny lost. The fight vibed nonclimax. Sportswriter stupes yelled, "Fix!"

Pete laughed. Fuck it-Pete _knew_:

Sonny was old. Sonny was slow. Sonny was tigerfried.

70

(Las Vegas, Saigon, Saravan, Bao Loc, 3/21/65-6/15/65)

Let's escalate. Let's _watch_.

Khanh is in. Khanh is out. Premier Ky kreams Premier Khanh. Don't blink-koups and kreamouts kome kwick.

"Escalate"-a verb-LBJ's word: "To increase, enlarge or intensify."

The war escalated. Wayne watched.

More troops came in. More troops got pledged. Provocation meant response. More Marines came in. More Marines got pledged. More Airborne came in. More Airborne got pledged in response.

More dead:

More bomb attacks in mid-Saigon. More mid-range dead. The Brinks Hotel/the embassy-more Yankee dead.

More VC. More night patrols, More sabotage.

Pleiku-much aircraft blow-nice U.S. fleet. VC attack-most bold and sincere. VC use pole-and-satchel bombs-homemade/trиs VC. TNT/ palm leaves/bamboo.

_Many_ planes blow. _One_ VC die.

Provocation meant response. Response meant bomb runs. More pilots. More troops. More artillery.

Stanton ran numbers. Provocation meets response-thus fervor meets weight. Stanton predicted two hundred K troops-in by '66.

Big numbers. Big ordnance. Big weight.

Wayne watched. Wayne dug it. Wayne missed the point. Vietnam was a shithole. The Cong couldn't lose. The Cong lived to die.

A Cong walked in the Go-Go. Said Cong wore Cong drag-black pj's deluxe. A spec-4 shot him. A chest bomb blew. Oops-Cong booby-trapped.

Six dead-all U.S.-Cong reigns six-to-one.

Stanton loved the war. Pete loved the war. Stanton and Pete loved Cuba. Cuba was a shithole. Cuba was Saigon with sand.

The kadre loved the war. The kadre kame for Kuba. Wayne came to watch.

He stayed in Saigon. He cooked dope. He watched. GIs hit the Go-Go. GIs bought whores. GIs fucked whores on floor planks.

He watched.

The O-heads decomped. Quicklime ate bone. Marvs made fertilizer. Marvs sold it discount.

He watched.

The Cong burned pylons. Saigon went dark. Pilots dropped psychedelic-tint flares.

He watched. He worked. He lived in Saigon. He cabbed to Bao Loc. He bought weapons. Said weapons were dope cover. Said weapons were donation stock.

He jeeped up and back. He tailed patrols. His standard procedure was _watch_.

4/8/65-near Dinh Quan. Rice field firefight-jarheads and VC.

A road mine popped. Wayne's jeep flew. The windshield blew up. The driver ate glass. The driver died. Wayne crouched by his stiff.

Bushes-off the road. They're moving now. They're bush-wrapped VC.

They charged. The jarheads proned out. Fair fight/no cover.

Wayne rolled free. Wayne pulled his piece. Wayne shot three VC. His shots dinged. He hit tin vests-fucking trashcan lids.

The VC fired. The jarheads fired. The jarheads aimed high and low. They shot feet. They shot legs. They shot faces. They hit vest-free zones.

The VC went down. Rounds dinged off the jeep. A medic went down with one in the neck. Wayne rolled and fired free.

He hit six VC. He notched all head shots. He double-killed.

The jarheads stood up. A jarhead tripped a punji stick. Spikes slammed him-knees to nipples-punctures and rips.

Wayne rolled to the medic. Wayne grabbed his Syrettes-pure morphine cc's.

He rolled to the jarhead. He shot up the jarhead. The jarhead convulsed. The jarhead hurled chunks of his spleen.