Croyd reached out and tweaked the mandibles of the insect the sergeant held. “Too spicy for my tastes,” he explained.

Chapter Thirty

Standing out in the black and the rain, Mark felt he really understood erosion for the first time. If he just stood there till, oh, about noon, he figured all of him would have washed away.

A joker shaped like an oil drum with a low dome of a head passed down the line of shivering troops, handing out Ripstop magazine pouches.

“Y’all guard these with your lives,” said Sergeant Slumprock, the platoon sergeant. He was another original, a good ol’ boy from Oklahoma, stubby and powerful, with a general melted look to him. Nobody knew if Slumprock was a joker name or his by-God surname. “Have ’em ready to hand at all times. God help you if you load one of them suckers into the magazine well of your M-16 without Lieutenant Gilbert, Sergeant Hamilton, or myself orderin’ you to do so. Got that?”

“Yes, Master Sergeant!”

He glared around at them with tiny blue Poland China-hog eyes beneath brows so pale they were only visible because the early-morning rain darkened them up some. He looked as if he wanted to run the old “I can’t hear you” gag on them. But like Hamilton, Second Squad’s leader, Slumprock didn’t really go in for hardass movie-drill-instructor games. You didn’t want to give the man any static, but he didn’t walk out of his way to step on your face either.

“All right. Everybody keep your heads out there. Now git your asses in them trucks.”

“Villagers say no deserter here,” Pham the translator said. He was a skinny little guy with not much in the way of a chin, dressed out in PAVN khakis and a rain-glossed pith helmet. He held his nostrils pinched, which made him talk funny, and he looked as if he wasn’t sure which disgusted him more, jokers or the Montagnard villagers huddled miserably under their freshly loaded guns.

Mark stood by Croyd with his M-16 held so muzzle-low, the flash suppressor was practically in the mud. Like those of the rest of the platoon, his hands and face streamed blood from dozens of tiny cuts. They had humped half a klick through elephant grass for their surprise visit to the suspect village. The stuff was higher than Mark’s head and edged like razors.

Lucius Gilbert stood with top two pairs of arms akimbo and a steady stream of rain sluicing off the bill of his cammo baseball cap, staring from the Vietnamese interpreter to the young Montagnard to the old Montagnard with a face like a relief map of the Chaоne Annamitique. “When I talk to you, why do you have to talk to him, and then he talks to the old guy?” Luce demanded. “Won’t the old fuck deign to talk to us directly?”

“He no can,” Pham said haughtily. “He no speak Vietnamese. Him moi.”

“That means ‘savage,’” Croyd said brightly. He was propped on his tail with his rifle cradled in his arms. He claimed it was uncomfortable to hold in a ready-to-fire position. “The Viets don’t think the ’Yards are human. Of course, the ’Yards return the favor.”

To Mark the twenty or so villagers, squatting in the rain in ponchos made from what would probably be colorful blankets if there were enough light to bring out colors, looked more like Andean Indians without derbies than Southeast Asian hill tribes-folk. Then again he wasn’t really sure what he thought they would look like. Mostly they looked pathetic.

Mark glanced at Sarge, standing beside a hootch with his M203 held ready. The brown canine eyes would not meet Mark’s.

I’m trembling, Mark realized.

“Tell them,” Luce said to Pham, “that we have a good tip that they’re harboring deserters. Mention to them that that’s a pretty serious offense.”

Pham spoke rapidly to the younger, who spoke to the elder, who grunted. The grunt came back down the chain.

“Him say no deserter here.” From the way Pham was glaring at the elder, Mark suspected he had said more than that.

Suddenly Luce’s upper right hand lashed out, seized the old man by the wrist, and dragged his hand out from under the blanket. “Just like I thought,” Luce crowed, holding the captive arm up for display while the old man glared holes in his face. “A Timex watch. Takes a licking, keeps on ticking. Some tribal people.”

He let go the old man’s arm. “Have it your way, you soul-bought old puke. All right, everybody, search the village. Really shake it down.”

“I don’t like this,” Mark muttered to Croyd from the corner of his mouth.

“Just remember, you volunteered.”

“There!” Gilbert’s strident yell cut across the white-noise rain. “That man! What’s your problem, soldier? Why aren’t you following orders?”

It was Eraserhead, the squad fuckup, still standing there in the middle of the village with the little toy Cub Scout-size pack that was all he could carry pulling his shoulders back like modeling clay and the butt of his M-16 planted in the mud.

“I ain’t going,” he said.

“What the fuck did you say?”

Eraserhead raised his round little chin. Water beaded on his rubbery dark skin. “I ain’t going in no huts! I saw Platoon and Apocalypse Now. They probably got all these crossbows and punji sticks and booby traps and shit just waiting.”

In three strides Luce was beside him, grabbing him by the biceps. He pointed. “Get your ass in that hootch. Right fucking now.”

Eraserhead pulled away from him. Luce held on. Eraserhead squealed in pain as his upper arm stretched.

“Lemme go! I won’t do it!”

“You bogus little fuck!” Luce went wild, pummeling the boy with four fists in a frothing fury. Eraserhead’s malleable flesh dented and flowed beneath the storm of blows. Sergeant Hamilton was between them, thrusting Luce back with a strong left arm. Luce staggered, almost went on his ass in the mud, caught his balance. Eraserhead sat down in a puddle and began to cry.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Luce yelled.

“You got no call to go beating on my men, sir,” Sarge said in a low voice.

“That man disobeyed a direct order.”

“Then there’s disciplinary procedures to follow. You can’t lay hands on him.”

“Look, just spare me the petit-bourgeois horseshit, will you?” Gilbert started forward as if looking to try the sergeant on for size.

Then he stopped. He had belatedly realized that both barrels of Hamilton’s weapon were trained on the center of his little hill of belly.

“You’re going on report for this, Hamilton!” Luce shrieked, screwing his face up so tight it almost pushed his Lennon glasses off his nose. “You’ll bake in the Box for fucking weeks!”

“That’s fine, sir. Charge me if you want. But remember this: lay hands on one of my men again, I’ll kill you.”

He turned away, put a gentle arm around Eraserhead’s shoulder and helped him up. “You okay, son? Nothing permanent out of place? Good. Why don’t you come along, cover me while I search that old hootch there?”

They were out of the jungle but not out of the rain. The hills their patrol route ran up and down were steep-sided hogs-backs, lightly forested. It probably would have been very pleasant, if Mark didn’t have a heavy rucksack on his back, infected leech bites on his right hip, and a rifle in his hands that felt frilly as alien as any Kondikki artifact. And if he wasn’t expected to tote it all up and down slopes that ran with slick-mud water like a polluted water slide.

He had just helped Studebaker Hawk down a meter-high drop-off when both feet squirted out from under him. He sat down hard. He began to slide. He shot past the Hawk, who was so startled that he lost his balance, too, and fell sideways. Fortunately there was a bush he could grab and prevent himself and the radio from following Mark. In his own personal rivulet, bouncing over moguls, flailing his long arms and legs and going, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” as if that would do any good, Mark shot clear to the bottom of the hill. He landed in a narrow hollow between hills, sitting in the midst of what at the moment was a full-blown stream. Fortunately this had some rocks in it to stabilize the slippery mud, otherwise he might not have stopped till he hit the South China Sea.