“What’s this?” O’Connor said to the sergeant, who now handed Jon Kirkwood a similar-looking harness.

“Gunner’s belt,” the staff sergeant said, pulling from a metal box two green plastic headsets, each with a boom microphone extending from a bracket fastened to the right earpiece.

“Why do we need these?” Kirkwood asked, fastening the wide belt around his waist and pulling the leather adjustment tabs on either side of the buckle, drawing it tight around his middle.

“So you won’t fall out,” the crew chief said, handing each of the two captains a headset. “That long strap locks into the tie-down rings on the cargo deck. That way, if we get into some shit, you can maneuver around without involving yourselves in some short-term sky diving, if you know what I mean. You might dangle, but you won’t splatter. I’ll get your headsets hooked up to the intercom and the gunner’s belts secured to the deck for you once we get aboard. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

“We’re just catching a lift to Chu Lai,” Kirkwood said, now helping O’Connor get his waist cinch tightened. “Can’t we just use the seat belts?”

“If we had any seats,” the staff sergeant said and laughed. “Mostly the grunts just pile in and sit on the floor, letting their feet hang out the sides with their rifles pointed between their toes. They don’t wear shit. Since you guys are newbees, Captain Oliver, our pilot, told me to put gunner’s belts on you two, in case we gotta dodge a few bullets.”

“You’re flying us over enemy territory en route to Chu Lai?” Kirkwood said, now feeling a lump tightening in his throat. He looked at O’Connor, who smiled wide. “Terry, this is no fucking joke, is it?”

“Hey, pal, I got here when you did. I had no chance to pull any pranks,” O’Connor said, snugging the gunner’s belt higher on his waist so it didn’t interfere with his Colt .45 pistol hanging in its holster off his right hip.

“You didn’t hear all about that shit, sir, when you went through orientation on Okinawa, before you shipped to Da Nang?” the staff sergeant said, helping Kirkwood and O’Connor get settled on the metal floor of the UH1E Huey utility helicopter.

“We only left Norton Air Force Base on Wednesday,” Kirkwood replied. “As soon as we got to Okinawa, we got on a plane to Da Nang. Hell, we never got to sleep or even take a shower, much less go to any orientation briefings.”

“Anyplace here can net you an enemy round,” the staff sergeant said, snapping the tie-down straps from their gunner’s belts to the cargo rings set in the chopper’s floor panels. Then he looked at Terry O’Connor, who still worried with the adjustment of his sidearm. “Sir, you won’t need that .45 at all, unless we get shot down and you survive the crash. We get in the shit, you’re gonna open up with the two M14 rifles I’m fixing to hand to you.”

The crew chief then flipped open the lid to a long, wooden box tied into the right rear cargo area, at the foot of one of the chopper’s auxiliary fuel bladders. From it he drew out the two rifles and a large metal can of .30-caliber belted ammunition and set it between Kirkwood’s legs.

“Hang on to those rounds for me, sir,” the staff sergeant said, and pulled out an M60 machine gun and handed it to O’Connor. “Hold that up high for me when I stand in the door and pull down on those rubber straps. Once I got it hooked, then you can let go and it’ll just hang in place. Then we’ll feed a belt of that ammo up to it.”

“You boys doing okay?” a voice spoke from the other side of the helicopter.

“That’s Captain Jeff Oliver and First Lieutenant Bill Perry,” Staff Sergeant Dixon said, pointing through the chopper’s open cargo area, which had its center occupied by a large wooden crate, forcing any passengers to ride sitting on the outside edge of the floor.

Kirkwood and O’Connor both turned and waved to the helicopter’s pilot and copilot and then offered thumbs-up signals.

“Toby, lets get rolling,” the chopper pilot said, climbing in the left front seat, strapping himself in place, and plugging in his communications wire that dangled out of the back of his helmet.

“You guys hear me okay?” the pilot then added, now speaking through the headsets that Kirkwood and O’Connor wore, and through the crew chief’s helmet phones. Tethered by a long coil of wire plugged into a gray metal control box overhead in the center of the helicopter’s cargo area, Dixon also had connected Kirkwood’s and O’Connor’s lines from their headsets to the same communications terminal.

“Five by five,” the staff sergeant spoke as he walked to the side of the helicopter, the black wire leading from his helmet coiled in his left hand. Once at his station, where he had eye contact with the pilot and a good view of the entire helicopter, he began rotating his right hand over his head, signaling Captain Oliver to start turning the blades and firing the chopper’s turbine engine.

Terry O’Connor found the talk button for his microphone dangling against his chest on the wire that connected him to the overhead communications box. He then fastened the device to his shirt with the metal spring clip made on its back, and pressed the button.

“Roger, wilco, five by five,” O’Connor said and laughed. “Kirkwood, can you hear me?”

“Yes!” the lawyer replied, shouting over the drone of the Huey’s engine, now fired and spinning the rotor blade overhead, shaking the aircraft as it gained speed.

“If you’ll push that button hanging in the middle of your chest, you won’t have to yell,” O’Connor said, pointing to the control device dangling on Kirkwood’s wire.

“I keep forgetting that lawyer captains are like second lieutenants,” Captain Oliver said, and laughed over the intercom. “This your first chopper ride?”

“We rode in them at TBS,” O’Connor said, pushing the button. “Never had any headsets, though. Just rode in the belly of the beast and looked out the windows.”

“First time in a Huey, though,” Kirkwood said, finding his talk button and clipping it to his shirt. “We only rode in the troop transport helicopters, CH-34s and 46s.”

As the skids lifted from the concrete flight line, Staff Sergeant Dixon stepped on the rail, and sat on the edge of the doorway beneath the M60 machine gun. A few feet above the ground, Oliver tilted the aircraft’s nose down, lifting its tail high, and sped forward, slowly gaining altitude and barely clearing the buildings just past Da Nang Air Base’s perimeter fences. Gaining only a few more feet of altitude, seeming to hug the treetops, the captain set the Huey’s power to its cruise airspeed, leaving the world in a green blur beneath Kirkwood’s and O’Connor’s feet.

“Amazing! I love it,” O’Connor said, holding tight to the M14 rifle that the crew chief had given him, and looking out at the vista of rice paddies and thatched-roof huts that suddenly appeared beneath the racing aircraft as it left the cityscape of Da Nang and entered the countryside.

“See the iron bridge crossing the river to the left?” Captain Oliver called on the intercom. “Then to the right of it, at our eleven o’clock, that big orange and green mountain with all the roads and crap around it?”

“Sure, I see it,” Kirkwood said, holding fast to his rifle and sitting between O’Connor on his left and Staff Sergeant Dixon standing behind the machine gun on his right.

“Tallyho the iron bridge and the mountain,” O’Connor said and laughed. “I always wanted to say that. Tallyho. That’s pilot talk.”

“Roger that,” Oliver said and laughed. “That’s Hill 55, home plate for the Seventh Marine Regiment. Straight south and just a tad west is Fire Support Base Ross, or as we call it, LZ Ross. It’s a combat outpost on two low knolls in the middle of the Que Son Valley, between LZ Baldy to the east and LZ Ryder due west of it. Eleventh Marines has a mix of artillery batteries there, along with a fair-sized infantry task force detached from two battalions out of the Seventh Marines, not quite a regimental landing team but larger than a battalion landing team. They also have some elements from the First Tank Battalion and a few other supporting arms, along with a helicopter refueling station. Oh, and the army has some units from the First Cavalry Division there, too. So it’s a pretty active plot on the map. We gotta set down there and drop off this box. Then we chop east to Chu Lai and get you guys to your destination. Should make it before noon chow.”

“Terrific!” O’Connor said, beaming a smile.

“I’m not so sure it’s all that terrific, Terry. I’ve heard stories about the Que Son Valley and Fire Base Ross, along with LZ Ryder and LZ Baldy. They call it Indian country for good reasons,” Kirkwood said, frowning and now pointing his M14 out the door, wrapping his hand around the small of the stock and laying his finger on the side of the trigger ring.

“Wise fellow,” Toby Dixon then offered, leaning his shoulder into the machine gun, angling his body out the door, behind the weapon, ready to fire. “We usually start picking up a little ground fire once we clear the southeastern finger of Hill 55. Sometimes before then. Charlie and his cousin, Luke the Gook from Hanoi, hang out in goodly numbers south of that iron bridge, thick as fleas around this Cam Ne hamlet area, and pretty much litter the countryside from there all the way to LZ Ross.”

“What’s this, piped-in music?” O’Connor said, suddenly hearing the broadcast of American Forces Vietnam Radio streaming through his headset.

“That’s the ADF,” Captain Oliver answered. “Automatic Direction Finder. We tune it to the broadcast from AFVN in Da Nang, and the little needle on this dial here in the middle of the instrument panel points a bearing to their transmitter tower. We use it as a backup navigation aid, plus we get to hear music on the intercom, if we want. Adds a little ambience to the setting, don’t you think?”

“Gets me going,” O’Connor said. “All we need now is coffee service.”

“Got a thermos bottle full of it, and a jug of red Kool-Aid, too,” Toby Dixon offered, and laughed. “But you gotta serve yourself.”

“Goooooooood morning, Vietnam!” the voice coming from the radio broadcast said. “Air Force Sergeant Dan Styers, live and in the grid with your special-request fire missions this fine Saturday on AFVN, simulcasting from beautiful downtown Da Nang and Hue City/Phu Bai. Spreading the gospel of rock and roll throughout Eye Corps. First in the breach: There’s a bunch of jarheads up in Quang Tri Province, somewhere near Con Thien, filling sandbags today, and otherwise doing a little housekeeping and bunker mending along their DMZ home front. Staff Sergeant Ken Pettigrew, this one’s for you and your weapons platoon widowmakers with Echo Company, Second Battalion, Ninth Marines.

“From their September 1965 album, Animal Tracks, a cut that seems to have become an anthem around these parts, Eric Burdon and the Animals. We gotta get outta this place! Yeah, baby.”

“We gotta get out of this place. If it’s the last thing we ever do. We gotta get out of this place, ’cause girl, there’s a better life for me and you.”

Just as the bass guitar soloed its heavy downbeat between the chorus and the next verse, Staff Sergeant Dixon opened fire with his .30-caliber machine gun, sending a trail of red tracers toward the edge of a clearing beneath the low-flying helicopter. Hot shell casings rained on Jon Kirkwood, who had zoned out listening to the music. The shock of the gunfire’s sound and the heated brass and ammunition belt links dropping on his head and down his shirt collar sent him scrambling inside the chopper.

Terry O’Connor instinctively watched Dixon’s glowing stream of red-phosphorus-tipped tracer rounds burning through the air, and followed their ruby streaks to a dozen running soldiers dressed in olive green uniforms with turtleshell-looking helmets on their heads. Most of the men had rifles with wooden stocks and banana-shaped magazines jutting from beneath the weapons. Two men had long, tubular weapons with a flanged opening at one terminal, and a bulbous, green object fixed to the opposite end.

“Fucking NVA,” O’Connor said, and began firing his M14 rifle at the group of soldiers now running to cover.

“They’ve got a couple of B-40s,” Dixon said, training his line of tracers toward the two soldiers with the rocket-propelled grenades. “We can deal with the small-arms stuff, but an RPG in the cockpit could ruin our day. Focus your fire on those two guys with the stovepipes.”

Jon Kirkwood managed to stand, and snugged the rifle next to his cheek, shutting his off-side eye and looking down the top of the M14.

“Skipper! Don’t bother trying to aim,” Dixon said, seeing the captain struggling to gain his sight alignment before firing. “We’ve got them loaded with tracers. Just look at the target and guide your tracers to them. Like squirting a water hose.”

Kirkwood and O’Connor both raised their heads from the cheek pieces of their rifles and began firing and watching the bright red glow of their tracers strike. Between the two lawyers and the helicopter crew chief, they managed to knock down four enemy soldiers, including one with a B-40 rocket launcher. However, the second man with the RPG had gotten to the cover of the trees.

Terry O’Connor saw the white smoke from the ascending rocket headed straight at the wide-open cargo door, just as Jeff Oliver turned the Huey hard right and dove. Suddenly all that Kirkwood and O’Connor saw was the sky and the rocket-propelled grenade climbing above them, narrowly missing the belly of the aircraft.

While Oliver maneuvered the helicopter away from the clearing, hugging the treetops and racing from the enemy force, Lieutenant Bill Perry radioed news of the sighting and map grid coordinates ahead to the air liaison in the operations section at LZ Ross, calling for an artillery fire mission from the two gun batteries based there. As the helicopter vectored west, to get out of the line of fire, the call of “shots out” came over the radio headsets. In minutes, columns of gray and brown smoke and debris blew skyward in the distance, as the salvo of 105-millimeter high-velocity explosive rounds crashed into the forest where the helicopter had encountered the North Vietnamese unit.

“Damn, that was fast. Besides the RPG, did they even get a shot off?” O’Connor said.

“They were shooting the whole time,” Oliver answered. “You didn’t see the fountain of tracers streaming up at us?”

“I only saw the rocket come at us,” O’Connor said.

“I didn’t see anything but our rounds going down,” Kirkwood added.

“Take my word for it, guys,” Oliver said, “they hosed us pretty good. I have two bullet holes in the windshield, and a third ding in the glass between Billy boy’s feet and mine. When we get on the ground, we’ll look for leaks. Hopefully, we just got a few fresh vents in the skin.”

“Didn’t hardly seem real,” Kirkwood said, sitting back down, but not dangling his feet outside the door, crossing them under himself instead.

“Never does, sir,” Dixon said, pinning a fresh belt of ammo into the M60 machine gun. “Only after it’s over and you think about it a little while does it ever get a grip on you.”

Just as Toby Dixon stepped from the Huey and moved to his station at the side of the aircraft, a Marine major and a captain came running to the pilot’s side window. Behind them a crew of six men ran to the chopper’s opposite side and began hurriedly unlatching the tie-down straps on the wooden crate, and then dragged it out the open door.

“Captain!” the major shouted as the men worked, pulling the cargo off the helicopter landing pad. “I’ve got eight wounded, three in bad shape, just a few clicks east of us. Army can’t help us. First Air Cav has its birds tied up west of here. Medevac helicopters from Marble Mountain will take half an hour to get to our guys, and you can be there in five mikes. You can have them at Charlie Med in the time it takes the two medevac choppers to get to their location. It might mean saving some lives.”

“Jump in and guide me to them,” Oliver said.

“My alpha, Captain Brown here, will go with you,” the major said. “I’ll radio ahead and get you cleared.”

“Dixon, we dripping anywhere?” the pilot called to the crew chief.

After squatting to take a quick look under the chopper, and then above it, and along the tail section, the staff sergeant answered the captain, “Looks dry. No warning lights?”

“Not a one. I think we’re intact. Jump back aboard and get on your gun,” Oliver said. “Picking up eight, I’ll need some room, so you two lawyers bail out for now. I’ll pick you up back here once I get these wounded men to Charlie Med. You can grab some chow with these guys while you wait.”

Kirkwood and O’Connor only had time to unlatch their gunner’s belts from their waists and jump off the aircraft before it cleared the deck and sped away from them, leaving the two captains in a filthy cloud, still holding the M14 rifles and wearing the headsets that Dixon had issued them.

“Major Jack Hembee,” the darkly tanned and weathered infantry operations officer said to Terry O’Connor and Jon Kirkwood as they followed the crew of Marines dragging the big wooden box from the landing site toward a line of heavily fortified bunkers and general-purpose tents with all of the wall flaps rolled up. As he said his name, the major put out his hand, rough and covered with thick calluses, and both lawyers took turns giving it a shake.

Nearby and in the distance, covering the fire base’s two low hills, other rows of tents and hard-backed sea huts that Marines called hooches stood among a maze of bunkers and sandbagged emplacements ensconcing the two composite batteries of 105- and 155-millimeter howitzers based at LZ Ross from the Eleventh Marine Regiment, and a dozen or more 81-millimeter mortar positions from the Seventh Marine Regiment. Among the short barrels of the howitzers stood two long snouts jutting from a pair of eight-inch cannons capable of shooting quarter-ton projectiles more than thirty miles. Snuggled within the pattern of medium- and long-range artillery pieces, several M48 battle tanks sat in the shade of camouflage netting with their hatches open and Marines lounging near them. Along the perimeter of coiled razor wire and barbed-wire fencing stood half a dozen wooden observation towers fifty feet tall. For the two newcomers, the widespread fire-support base looked as much like a prison as it did a combat outpost.

“Welcome to LZ Ross,” the major said, walking briskly to get away from the cloud of dust stirred by the departing helicopter.

“We’re with wing legal,” O’Connor offered nervously, trying to break friendly ice with the infantry officer, whose leathery look and tough demeanor had him intimidated. “On our way to Chu Lai to visit with clients.”

“Hopefully, this won’t delay you gentlemen much more than an hour,” the major said, pulling a handful of chewing tobacco from a red-and-white striped pouch and stuffing the tobacco in his mouth. “Chew?”

“No, thanks,” Kirkwood said.

“Don’t mind if I do, sir,” O’Connor said, and took a wad of the dark brown, sugary leaves and pushed them inside his cheek. The spicy tobacco immediately began to tingle and burn the soft tissue of the lawyer’s mouth and caused saliva to gush.

“I didn’t know you chewed,” Kirkwood said.

“First time for everything,” O’Connor said and spit.

“Staff Sergeant Pettigrew, I’d love to have you coming along, but I think you’re better off filling those sandbags,” First Lieutenant Jimmy Sanchez said, stopping to talk to the staff noncommissioned officer while his platoon from Third Reconnaissance Battalion ambled their way past him, spread at intervals thirty feet apart. “Besides, I hear that the beer fairy landed this morning, and I’m sure your guys wouldn’t want to miss all of the doings this evening.”

“Right on, sir,” Ken Pettigrew said, “I heard that, too. Hey, you guys catch my song on the radio this morning?”

“Sure did,” Sanchez said. “Had it blasting in the tents when my best bud here, Lieutenant Tommy McKay, blew in, riding aboard that beer-laden puddle jumper that landed out there on the cow trail.”

“Yeah, I flew in with the beer fairy,” McKay said, walking behind the unit’s navy hospital corpsman and approaching the spot where the reconnaissance platoon commander now stood. “Along with my skinny ass, Lobo Gunn hauled in two hundred pounds of hamburger meat, and a dozen cases of Budweiser for you guys. Had a hell of a time taking off with that load, and then landing on that piss-poor excuse of a road you’ve got here, instead of at the airfield, had me pretty puckered, too. My fearless pilot didn’t want the hassle of finding somebody to haul the beef and brews that last bit of yardage, so he set down right here, on your doorstep.”

“I wondered why all the hubbub down there when you guys landed,” Pettigrew said, leaning on a long-handled shovel by a perimeter bunker where his men dug the fighting trenches deeper and put the dirt inside the green mesh bags, building a wall along the ditch with them. “I thought somebody had got shot up or something, so you made a forced landing. Then I heard you had just delivered some burgers and beer. Pretty crazy. Where’d you guys find the loose goodies?”

“Shanghaied them off some army brass in Dong Ha,” McKay said, stopping for a moment to chat with the staff sergeant alongside his pal Jimmy Sanchez. “They had a bunch of enlisted guys sweating their asses off, disembarking it from a C-117 into a truck for some wingding at the Officers’ Club. My insane pilot pal Archie offered the doggies a hundred fifty bucks cold, hard cash for a dozen cases of the beer and four of their fifty-pound boxes of frozen beef paddies. These guys didn’t even stutter step snatching the money, all too happy to screw their fearless leaders out of some of their bounty. They seemed delighted knowing that a bunch of Marine grunts out near Con Thien would get it.”

“Doggies aren’t such bad folks,” Pettigrew said, slurring out the words in his Texas drawl. “It’s their pansy-ass officers that could fuck up a wet dream.”

“Lieutenant Sanchez tells me you’re a Texas boy, too,” McKay said, picking up on the accent in the staff sergeant’s voice.

“I’m an eighter from Decatur,” Pettigrew said, and smiled as he turned his right shoulder toward McKay to show off a lone-star flag he had tattooed there. “Done a couple of night operations with those rickie-recon cowboys you’re strolling with today, back when we kicked off what used to be called Operation Kingfisher, now Operation Kentucky. Anyhow, that’s where Lieutenant Sanchez and I got to knowing each other, fellow Texans and all.”

“Texan here, too, grew up in Dumas,” McKay said, beaming a proud smile for the staff sergeant. “Lieutenant Sanchez and I were classmates at Texas University in Austin. Played a little football there.”

“Shit, I heard of you,” Pettigrew said, and laughed. “Longhorns running back and a hell of a pass catcher, too, back in ’63 and ’64, when they damned near won back-to-back national championships. T. D. McKay, that’s you! Well, shit a brick. Glad to meet you, sir.”

“Now I’m a lawyer down in Da Nang, playing hooky for a few days with you guys,” McKay said, smiling.

“Well, you fucked up, Skipper. I think I would play hooky down there,” Pettigrew said and laughed. “Beer’s cold and women hot. Up here, the beer’s hot, if you can get any, and well, the women may trot, but they do it on four legs.”

“Nervous sheep up here, Sergeant?” McKay said and laughed.

“Can’t say as I’ve seen any ewes running loose in these parts,” Pettigrew drawled, “but they’d be a durn sight prettier than some of these pigs I’ve seen a few of the boys chasing.”

“We’ve gotta shove,” Lieutenant Sanchez said, seeing his platoon sergeant giving him a high sign that he now brought up the rear of the line, and that all of his Marines had moved down the trail leading away from the compound and into the bush.

“Hook ’em horns,” Pettigrew said, and held up his hand with his index and pinky fingers extended, signifying the University of Texas Longhorns hand gesture.

“We”ll catch you in the morning,” Sanchez said, and with McKay made the same Texas Longhorns hand signs back at the staff sergeant.

“I think I’ve got it under control, now,” O’Connor said, pushing the wad of chewing tobacco around his cheek with his tongue, and then spitting again in the dirt. The three officers squatted in the shade of one of the large green tents where the major dug through what remained of a cardboard case of C-ration meals.

“You got to slinging slobber pretty good for a while, like a kid with a mouthful of hair,” Hembee said and laughed. “I fully expected you to barf up breakfast. Looked like your gills turned a little green back there, walking off the LZ.”

“I have to admit, I felt a little queasy then, but I feel pretty good now. The stuff kind of lifts your spirits, like a little adrenaline charge,” O’Connor said, smiling a brown-toothed grin at Kirkwood and letting fly a slug of Beechnut juice between his feet. “Got any more of those beef and rocks in that box? I’m feeling a little hungry too.”

“I like you, Skipper,” Hembee said, digging around the case of C rations, looking for another beef and potatoes meal. “You jump right in with both feet. Sorry, no more beef and rocks, but I have some ham and motherfuckers. They’re pretty good. That’s what I’m going to eat.”

“Throw it here,” O’Connor said, “I’ll give ham and motherfuckers a whirl.”

“There you go,” Hembee said, tossing the box of canned rations to O’Connor. “Grab yourself one of those lawn chairs and kick back. Meanwhile, I’ll scarf us up some bug juice from the vacuum jug down in the bunker.”

The two Marines reclined in lounge chairs made of tubular aluminum with green and white plastic webbing while they took the cans of food from their meals’ cardboard boxes. Kirkwood noticed on the white plastic armrest of his chair the words “Property of First MAW Officers’ Club” stenciled in black.

“I thought these chairs looked familiar,” he said, lifting the freshly cut lid from the can of his beef and potatoes and handing the thumb-size, P-7 can opener he had just used to O’Connor.

“Go ahead and string that John Wayne on your dog-tag chain, Terry,” the major said, returning with a three-gallon thermos jug filled with Kool-Aid, and seeing Kirkwood handing off the can opener. Then he rummaged in the C-ration case and took out a small brown paper packet, tore it open, and removed a new P-7 from the package.

“One for you too, Kirkwood,” Hembee said, and tossed the opener to the lawyer. “Like spare socks and boot laces, you need to have one of those with you at all times in the bush.”

“Major Danger, sir,” a lanky, blond-haired staff sergeant wearing a faded green T-shirt said, ducking under the tent where Kirkwood, O’Connor, and Hembee now sat, eating in the shade.

“What ya got, Goose?” Hembee said, looking up at the Marine who held a yellow slip of paper in his hand.

“Good news and bad news, sir,” the staff NCO replied.

“Shoot,” Hembee said, working the lid off his ham and motherfuckers.

“Good news first,” the sergeant said. “All eight of our wounded got aboard the Huey, now inbound to Charlie Med. The three worst ones still have their eyes blinking and hearts pumping. Looks like they have a chance if that chopper doesn’t go down first.”

“Doesn’t go down?” Hembee said, sitting up and looking at the staff sergeant he called Goose.

“That’s the bad news, sir,” the blond Marine said. “Inbound here, your luncheon guests took a few dings from the NVA. A hydraulic line or connection must have gotten creased or cracked by one of the rounds. At any rate, they sprung a leak. Got a warning light just after takeoff from the bush with the wounded aboard. If he makes it to Charlie Med, the pilot’s shutting it down there for repairs. One way or the other, he sure as hell ain’t gonna make it back here today. So your house guests may have to spend the night.”

“Logistics bird usually drops on our doorstep about zero eight,” Hembee said, looking at Kirkwood and O’Connor. “You can catch that to Chu Lai tomorrow, or you can try to ride out of here this afternoon on one of the supply trucks. They convoy to Chu Lai at about two o’clock, get you there by five or six this evening. I don’t recommend going by truck, though, unless you like gunplay.”

“Ambushes, you mean?” Kirkwood said.

“Lots of opportunity for them,” Hembee said, now digging into his canned lunch with a spoon. “Mines and booby traps, too. We have guys clear them every day, but they still keep springing up like daisies each morning. Charlie’s an industrious little bastard.”

“We’ll wait for the chopper,” Kirkwood said, relaxing in his chair and focusing back on his meal.

“You’re Hembee, right?” O’Connor said, spooning out ham and lima beans from his can.

“Right, Jack Hembee,” the major said. “Born and raised on the family cattle ranch near Cody, Wyoming.”

“That staff sergeant addressed you by another name,” O’Connor said.

“You mean what Goose called me?” the major said and smiled. “Major Danger. That’s the nickname my Marines assigned to me. Sooner or later, everybody gets one out here. Kind of a family thing. Could have gotten one like Major Disaster or Major Fuckup, just to name a couple that come to mind.”

“Your men must think a lot of you,” O’Connor said, smiling at the major.

“I hope so,” Hembee said. “Even though I’m just the operations officer, they know I’d put my life on the line for any one of them. I trust they’d do the same for me, or any of the other guys in our battalion. Meanwhile, since you combat virgins will spend the night, we got to get you some accommodations.”

The major sat up in his chair, looked in several directions, and then shouted, “Rat! Elvis! Henry! Front and center!”

In less than a minute a short, black Marine flanked by a tall, dark-haired man that looked strikingly like Elvis Presley, and a pug-nosed fellow with big ears whose shaved head glistened in the bright sunshine, looking like Henry from the Sunday newspaper comic strip, appeared under the tent.

“Yes, sir,” the black Marine who answered to the name King Rat spoke to the major.

“This is Captain Kirkwood and Captain O’Connor,” the major said to the three enlisted Marines. “They will remain overnight with us. Set up two cots in my hooch, and see if you can round up a canteen full of that raisin jack that your cannon-cocker buddies over at Golf battery cooked up last night. You might make sure that the sergeant major gets a taste, too; otherwise he’ll go snooping.”

“How did you know they made a batch last night?” King Rat said, grinning wide at the major.

“I’ve got a nose, Rat-man,” Hembee said. “I’d have to have one bad sinus problem not to smell that shit cooking. You might bullshit the bull-shitter, but you can’t snow the snowman.”

“You know, that shit’s illegal, sir,” Rat said, offering a sarcastic smile to go with the reminder.

“We have no tax stamps in Vietnam, so its up to the commander’s discretion,” the major said. “Besides, I have my defense counsel sitting right here. Now disappear.”

Quickly the three Marines ducked from the tent in three different directions.

“I think making distilled spirits does violate a few regulations, Major,” Kirkwood said, finishing his can of beef and rocks.

“You tell on us, and I won’t give you any,” Hembee said, grinning at Kirkwood.

Terry O’Connor spit in the dust. “Hell, I’m game for a little rotgut raisin jack.”

“You have any rounds to fit these rifles?” Kirkwood asked, picking up the M14 he had taken from the helicopter.

“One thing we have lots of, Skipper, that’s rounds,” Hembee said.

“At least I look better than you do after a bath,” Harris said to the dog, admiring himself in the full-length mirror and slipping on the brownish-green T-shirt and white boxer shorts that Brian T. Pitts had given him. He then forked his toes into a pair of yellow and white rubber shower shoes and flip-flopped out of his bedroom.

Turd, who had gotten his skin drenched in motor oil and then endured a fitful soap and water scrubbing in a metal tub on the patio, slunk in step behind Harris.

“That has got to be the ugliest fucking dog in the world,” Brian Pitts proclaimed in a boisterous voice from the living room where he sat flanked by two young Vietnamese females, neither hardly more than sixteen years old. Huong and two other cowboys sat in chairs at the dining table, paying little attention to their new cohort and his companion beast whose tan skin was now shown in the hairless gaps where mangy scales used to exist.

“That dog look like shit now, but you wait,” Huong spoke as he slammed mah-jongg tiles onto the tabletop, playing the game with his partners. “That dog he look pretty good, pretty soon. Don’t worry. He plenty smart, too. He see thing come when we not see. We keep him. I think he good luck. So why you call him shit?”

“Turd,” Harris said. “Not shit.”

“Turd is shit,” Huong said, throwing down another mah-jongg tile. “So why you name a good dog like this one such a bad name like that?”

“He brown like a turd, man,” Harris said, and smiled, hoping to raise some sense of humor from Huong. “Then when I spend the night under that concrete with his nasty ass, he smell like a turd, too. His breath even smell like shit.”

“Why not call him Joe?” Huong said, taking a sip of his tea and looking at the other two cowboys studying their game pieces. “I like name like Joe. Not like shit name.”

“Man, he’s Turd, and that’s that,” Harris said, flopping in a velvet upholstered sofa chair and spreading out his legs. The two girls cuddled next to Brian Pitts giggled as they looked at the view the black man had given them up his boxer shorts’ legs.

Seeing the two young hookers taking notice of his somewhat exposed genitals, Mau Mau grabbed his crotch with his right hand and shook it hard as he spoke.

“You want some of this?” he said, pumping his hand back and forth and laughing at them. “You never go back to that slinky white thing once you had a taste of this Chicago black snake.”

The two girls hid their faces in Brian Pitts’s shoulders and giggled harder.

“You could wear a robe, you know,” Pitts said, also noticing the billowing open legs of Harris’s underwear and his exposed nether regions. “What I see is not a pretty sight.”

“Then don’t look, motherfucker,” Harris retorted, and flopped his legs up and down, shaking what he had. Both girls giggled harder.

“With you beaming your ass in my face, it’s hard not to get an eyeful,” Pitts said. “What if I was queer? How would you feel then?”

Harris snapped his legs closed and then crossed them, tucking his shorts tight. “Don’t even fucking joke like that, man,” the suddenly shy Marine deserter said.

“You find that offensive?” Pitts asked.

“Fuck yeah, man,” Harris said, and then carefully eyed the blond-haired fellow Marine deserter dressed only in a royal-blue silk calf-length afghan-style shirt with matching velvet slippers. “You ain’t queer on anything. I see you with them bitches and all, but you dressed kinda sweet, too.”

“No, not a faggot,” Pitts said casually, lighting a cigarette. “However, I think that you should consider how you might offend other people by flashing your cock and balls. If you want to fuck one of the girls, just say so. Don’t go trolling for it.”

“Fuck you, man,” Harris said, standing, angry. Turd jumped up from the floor, ready to beat a hasty retreat with his master. “I want pussy, I say it. I ain’t like some pervert flashin’ my dick an’ all.”

“Sit down then, and shut up,” Pitts said, taking a long drag from his smoke. “We have some business.”

“Like what?” Harris said, sitting. Turd laid back down at his feet.

“Tomorrow, while Huong and the boys make some distributions, we’ve got to attend Sunday Mass, and you’re driving,” Pitts said, looking at Harris and not showing any expression.

“I ain’t no Catholic,” Harris said.

“Nor am I,” Pitts retorted. “We have some collections, and Sunday services have proved a good cover. Lots of Marines going and coming, nobody asking many questions, Sunday and all.”

“Fuck, man, that’s smart as shit,” Harris said, and smiled at his newfound boss and friend.

“We go in uniform, and you’re driving the jeep,” Pitts said.

“That’s cool.” Harris nodded. “I feel best in uniform anyway, ’cause wearing something else, CID be asking all kind of questions, you know.”

“Yes, I suspect so,” Pitts said through a cloud of smoke that came from his mouth as he talked. “Tomorrow you will sit in the jeep, armed with a pistol and rifle. When I meet these people, you will watch me. Anything funny go down, you start taking down everyone around me.”

“We on base, man?” Harris asked. “At chapel and all?”

“Yes,” Pitts said, finishing his cigarette. “We’re in a jeep with numbers that do not appear on any missing-vehicle report. I am dressed as a first lieutenant with an ID card and dog tags that match. You will dress as a sergeant, fully identified. Why would anyone question us?”

“Just gets me all scary and shit,” Harris said, shaking his shoulders as he spoke. “You got giant-size balls do shit like that.”

“We have more eyes looking for wrongdoing off-base than on-base,” Pitts said, taking a sip from a tall glass of iced tea he had sitting on an end table by a tall, silk shaded lamp. “Besides, why would they even be looking for us?”

“They be looking for my ass,” Harris said, shaking his head.

“They’ll be looking for a dirt-bag nigger named James Harris who smelled like a pile of shit and looked worse, not a squared-away black Marine sergeant,” Pitts said, and then added, “no offense.”

James Harris looked cold-eyed at Brian Pitts, not liking the racial epithet but clearly understanding what he meant by it. He nodded and said nothing.

“You ever hear tell of a guy called the Snowman?” Pitts said, sipping his tea.

“A few times I hear guys say that name, but never knew nothin’ about the dude,” Harris said, flipping the lid open on a gold cigarette box and taking out a smoke. “They say he the big man out here. They mostly scared of him. Say he kill lots of guys, ship dope by the truckload back Stateside. When I meet you I think about that, too. Maybe you the Snowman.”

“Fair-complected, blond hair, rather snowy-looking, don’t you think?” Pitts said, smiling.

“You be selling lots of shit, too. Snow, you know,” Harris said, igniting his cigarette with a gold lighter that matched the case and gold ashtray. “This pad laid out with some heavy shit, too. Ain’t no cheap stuff in this place. Ain’t no brass. Anything yellow metal, it’s gold. I checked it out. It’s nice. Like a palace or Hollywood mansion.”

“Then you understand where you are, then?” Pitts said. “What I expect of you. From my end you get loyalty and a fair cut of what we take. It’s a commitment with your life.”

“I done got that all clear in my head when old Huong there slap me on my ear with his .45,” Harris said, smiling. “I be loyal with you. Honest, too. I don’t tell no lie. Don’t you go lyin’ to me neither.”

“We do not tolerate lies from anyone within my house,” Pitts reaffirmed his American cohort. “I will never lie to you. Huong will never mislead you, either. No one will. Ever. Like betrayal, a lie reaps a bullet.”

“Cool,” Harris said, smiling nervously, thinking about the few times he had fibbed to his old supplier, Lance Corporal James Elmore, when he held back a little extra cash or skimmed a few grams of dope.

“Nanna has your uniforms nearly finished,” Pitts said, speaking of the woman who ran his household, and bossed the intern hookers who lived there. “She’ll have one of them ironed tonight so you’ll have it for tomorrow. Huong picked up a pair of size 12 double-E Corcoran jump boots for you this morning and got them all spit-shined. Here’s your new dog tags and an ID card to match, Sergeant Rufus Potter.”

“Fuck, man,” Harris said, sitting up, looking at the dog tags and identification card with his photograph on it that Pitts tossed to him. “Rufus Potter? What kind of fucked-up name you calling me? Man, that’s the fucked-upest name I ever heard. Rufus fucking Potter! Man, you makin’ fun of me!”

Huong suddenly swore a stream of Vietnamese profanity and looked at his two cowboys, and then with his left hand swept the mah-jongg tiles from the table onto the floor. As he stood from his chair, he pulled his .45-caliber pistol and put it to the forehead of the man sitting to his right.

“No, fuck, no!” Pitts screamed at Huong just as he pulled the trigger and sent the man’s brains spraying from the back of his head, showering the mahogany dining chair and the oriental carpet below it with blood, bone, and pulverized gray matter.

The two girls screamed, fully terrified, and fled upstairs, wailing for Madam Nanna. Mau Mau said nothing, and sat motionless in his chair while Turd snuggled close to his feet. Such sudden, unbridled violence made him realize that the seemingly tranquil, family-style atmosphere that Pitts sought so hard to engender in his household offered but a very thin veil over raw brutality, explosive and lethal.

In junior high school, a teacher had given James Harris a copy of Jack London’s, Call of the Wild to read. He had loved the book for many reasons. The dog and the black kid from the bad side of Chicago held much in common. Seeing Huong’s deadly tantrum made him think of Buck’s life as a sled dog, becoming leader and killing Spitz. He identified with the dog and his plight at surviving in a merciless place, akin to the nature of his own life back on his block in a neighborhood where life clashed with death daily.

“That man, he cheat me,” Huong said. The other cowboy stood and nodded, affirming what Pitts’s senior Vietnamese henchman told him. “He cheat at silly game. He do that, then he steal money, too. He sell us out too, if Benny Lam or Major Tran Van Toan pay him. He no good. I no like him long time.”

“Not by that name. Only Tommy I’ve met there is First Lieutenant McKay,” Kirkwood answered, holding out his canteen cup for Terry O’Connor to pour him some of the raisin jack from one of the two containers that King Rat and Elvis had brought them from Golf Company. “I heard a couple of guys call him Tommy, but mostly he goes by his initials, T. D.”

“Same guy. I know for a fact he’s at wing legal,” Hembee said, stuffing a fresh wad of Beechnut chew inside his cheek and then offering the pouch to O’Connor. “Some of this cowboy candy goes good with that jack, Terry, if you’ve got the gut for it. Just tuck it to one side, and try not to swallow too much juice when you take a drink.”

“Okay, I’m game,” O’Connor said, taking some tobacco from the major’s pouch and putting it in his mouth. “Chewing and drinking, I’m learning fast.”

“Why Tommy Touchdown?” Kirkwood said as he handed the major the canteen full of raisin jack.

“Well, T. D.’s not his initials,” Hembee said. “That stands for touchdown. If you followed college football during the past few years you’d know that McKay has a G for a middle initial. Gaylord. Thomas Gaylord McKay.”

“No wonder he kept it a secret. Gaylord?” O’Connor yucked.

“Probably one of the best scatback, option-ball carriers the University of Texas has ever had play football,” Hembee continued. “Next time you see him, check out his legs. They’re like tree trunks. Your man grew up in Dumas, Texas, right?”

“That’s him,” O’Connor said. “He mentioned Dumas at the hail and farewell party last night. Never breathed a word about football.”

“I know that’s him,” Hembee said. “He’s a big reason why Texas won the national championship in 1963, T. D.’s junior year. They should have won it his senior year, too, back in ’64, when they beat number-one Alabama in the Orange Bowl, 21 to 17. But since Arkansas upset the Longhorns in a game in October, beating them by a stinking point, 14 to 13, the AP and UPI polls did not consider Texas national-champion material, dropping them to number five. The Razorbacks just won on luck, one lousy point. When McKay and his class graduated they took the heart of the lineup with them, so Darrell Royal has not had a Longhorn team come close since. What’s ironic, McKay got picked up by the Los Angeles Rams in the first round of the NFL draft, but went to law school instead. Talk about a bonehead move. Now he’s a first lieutenant in Vietnam.”

“He never let on, and I’ll bet not many of the guys at the legal office know it either,” O’Connor said, spitting. “Only football player they ever mentioned was that crazy observation pilot Lobo Gunn, who played at New Mexico.”

“I’m sure Dicky Doo knows, and it probably explains the resentment that he holds for McKay,” Kirkwood said as he took his first sip of the raisin liquor. “Wow! That tastes somewhere between a hundred ten and a hundred forty octane. Warm all the way down, like cognac.”

“You know, Major Danger, this stuff is not all that bad,” Terry O’Connor said with a satisfied purr as he reclined in the lawn chair and sipped more of the home-distilled raisin hooch. “Nice of them to give us two full quarts.”

“A couple of canteens, I bet, didn’t even make a dent in their supply,” Hembee said, sipping from his cup. “Everybody writes home and asks for raisins, along with the cookies and other crap. Anytime somebody goes up to Da Nang or over to Chu Lai they bring back raisins. Didn’t take long to figure out what they had going on, especially when I start getting people volunteering to burn the shitters. That’s when they cook off a batch. Burning the shitters.”

“Looks like the battalion commander or the sergeant major would start cracking down,” Kirkwood said. “Last thing you need are drunks on watch.”

“I’ve yet to see it,” Hembee said. “Our CO doesn’t go looking for trouble. We’ve got enough on our plate with the number of operational commitments out here. If a little UA raisin jack is all we’ve got in the line of personnel problems, then we’re doing pretty good, I’d say. I hear stories about army troops up north and down south of us refusing to go on patrols, getting all doped up and shit. We haven’t seen anything like that with our Marines.”

“That you know about,” O’Connor said, sipping his cup.

“True, Captain,” Hembee said. “Then I know about their moonshine operation, don’t I.”

“First time I ever drank raisin jack,” Kirkwood said, stretching out in the lounge chair alongside the two other officers reclining in theirs. The three Marines watched as the last light of the setting sun streaked across the sky, and gray dusk faded the distant rice paddies and grass huts into darkness.

“In New York, I tasted something very similar to this raisin jack,” O’Connor said, sipping the aromatic liquor with its almost oily alcohol film that sheeted down the sides of his metal canteen cup as he swirled it, breathing the vapors. “Just like this stuff, it burned all the way down, and left a man feeling a nice, warm glow all over.”

“Tastes like cognac to me,” Kirkwood commented, now savoring the drink as he sipped it.

“This stuff I drank in New York is like cognac, but not aged in oak. A cousin to it, I guess,” O’Connor said, looking at the twinkling fire lights among the peasant huts in the distance. “Aqua vitae, the French call it by one name, which translated means the water of life. They also call it eau de vie, or burning water. I think from the way it goes down the hatch. But a buddy of mine had another name for it that I think you’d appreciate.”

Hembee laughed and said, “You sound as full of shit as a Christmas turkey, but go ahead. We’ve got all night.”

“My dad, back in Philly, has a buddy in New York who was in the Marine Corps with him, out in the Pacific in World War II,” O’Connor began. “Ben Finney is the guy’s name. He was a major and worked with the war correspondents and stuff. Now he writes a column in the New York Daily News.

“A few years back, Major Finney introduced me to a young fellow from Germany, going to Columbia, same as me. This guy’s dad was German ambassador to the United Nations, and supposedly he descended from Frederick the Great. He’s got all kinds of Bavarian nobility in his family legacy. At any rate, his grandfather was an artillery captain for the kaiser in World War I, and fought the Marines at the Battle of Belleau Wood. During World War II, the same officer is now a German general, and oversees the occupation of France.

“According to my friend, and I have nothing to back me up on this except his word, his grandfather, because of his enduring respect for U.S. Marines from World War I, had German soldiers raise and lower the U.S. flag each day at the American national cemetery at Belleau, France. The site where they buried most of the Marines who died at the Battle of Belleau Wood, right by the battleground.

“This fellow said that his grandfather also got executed by the Gestapo for plotting to assassinate Hitler. So that makes his raising and lowering of the Stars and Stripes at Belleau more believable, too.

“Last year, I went home on leave during early November, and participated in a little Marine Corps birthday celebration of sorts in Manhattan at this guy’s apartment. Now, even though he’s a German and all, he idolizes Marines. He wanted to join the Corps, but his father raised hell, so he stayed in college at Columbia. However, here I am in the Marine Corps, so Major Finney insists that I go with him to this guy’s apartment for the party.

“My boy’s got a life-size oil painting portrait of Frederick the Great hanging inside the doorway. The face on Frederick the Great and the puss on this cat look identical. So I’m pretty impressed. Then he hands us drinks in these two-hundred-year-old, sterling silver goblets with all kinds of ornate little silver sculptures encrusting the sides of them, and serves them to us off a sterling silver tray that matches the cups, also made more than two hundred years ago. The stuff that he poured tasted damned near the same as this raisin jack.”

“Stands to reason; raisins are grapes,” Kirkwood said.

“Well, here’s the good part. The story behind the liquor he served goes like this,” O’Connor continued. “It seems that the Battle of Belleau Wood took place in French wine country. After the war the farmers went back to growing their grapes there and making wine. They do it to this day.

“My German friend goes to Belleau, France, every year with his father, as a family custom, to pay homage to his grandfather’s memory, and to pay tribute to the Germans and Americans buried at the respective national cemeteries there. When he comes home he brings some of the wine and distilled spirits from the grapes these farmers grow at Belleau. The eau de vie or aqua vitae of Belleau Wood.

“Now, before we drank our toasts to the U.S. Marine Corps, the guy explains to us all this stuff about his grandfather, the German general, and his flag-raising, and how he admired the Marines at Belleau Wood. He also talks about how their blood soaked the land, and to this day mingles with the grapes that grow there. The eau de vie from Belleau he named Blood of Dead Marines. He has it bottled, and has even put on a private label: Blood of Dead Marines.

“Gentlemen, this raisin jack tastes like Blood of Dead Marines. So I propose that from this day hence, given the blood spilled by Marines in this far-off place, and given that this fine spirit came to life at the hands of good Marines, we should call it by that name: Blood of Dead Marines.”

“Terry,” Major Hembee said and laughed, “you’re so full of shit that my eyes crossed five minutes ago, but I have to admit, that is a dandy story, and a noble tribute to some outstanding rotgut. Blood of Dead Marines it is, then. Semper fi, gentlemen.”

“Semper fi, Major Danger,” O’Connor said, and tapped his canteen cup with Hembee’s and Kirkwood’s.

“Ben Finney, he’s still at the Daily News, right?” Kirkwood asked, sipping his drink. There’s a Marine there that draws the sports-page cartoons. Is that him?”

“No, that’s Bill Gallo,” O’Connor said. “Gallo, Finney, and my dad are all buddies, though. They were on Iwo Jima together, when my dad won the Navy Cross.”

“Hold up, one. He didn’t win it. He earned it,” Major Hembee said, correcting O’Connor. “You win a trophy for a footrace, but the Navy Cross, it’s a major form of tribute for a great sacrifice. It’s earned.”

“My bust, Major,” O’Connor said, blushing at his thoughtless choice of words. “Dad’s a stark, raving Democrat, but I know he would like you. He’s always pinging me on things like that, too. I called my trousers “pants” once, and he said, ‘Girls and women wear pants; men wear trousers.’ ”

“Enlisted Marine?” Hembee asked and smiled.

“Yes, sir, a sergeant. How’d you guess?” O’Connor said.

“Just a hunch,” the major said. “A sergeant with the Navy Cross from Iwo Jima impresses the hell out of me. I’d like to know your dad.”

“Enroll in a history course at the University of Pennsylvania and you’ll meet him,” O’Connor said. “He’s the professor. Now, you want to hear some long yardage on storytelling, just get my dad and Major Finney together with a pitcher of old Ben’s famous mint juleps, and those two can keep you up all night.”

“Mint juleps? Odd for a couple of Yankee gentlemen,” Kirkwood said.

“Oh, you don’t call Ben Finney a Yankee,” O’Connor said and laughed. “That’s as bad as me saying my dad won the Navy Cross. The good major is a classic southern gentleman, a Kentucky colonel, as a matter of fact, one of that state’s favorite sons. Kentucky colonel is an honor only bestowed by the governor of that great state. Ben Finney is from Kentucky, and makes a classic mint julep. In fact, Major Finney even taught Ernest Hemingway the proper way to build a mint julep.”

“Do tell,” Hembee said and chuckled. “This Blood of Dead Marines has loosened your tongue, Captain O’Connor. Please continue.”

“Just after the Second World War ended, old Ben got sent to France as a correspondent,” O’Connor rambled as Kirkwood now began to snore in the cool darkness of the evening, having finished his canteen cup of ninety-proof liquor. “One weekend, he went off into the countryside, touring on a bicycle, and stopped at this pension house or inn someplace north of Paris. He said he had no more than sat down in the place when a glass came sailing across the room and shattered on the stone wall.

“ ‘Can’t any of you frogs make a man a decent mint julep?’ this heavyset American guy with a salt-and-pepper beard bellowed from a table in the back. ‘Doesn’t anyone in this godforsaken country know how to make a mint julep?’

“Of course, Ben, coming from Kentucky, has always traveled with a quart bottle of Maker’s Mark, Kentucky bourbon whiskey in his valise, just in case of snakebite or some other emergency that would lend a good excuse for him taking a drink. So he snatched out his trusty bottle of Maker’s Mark and quickly ordered the barkeep to fetch some fresh-picked mint, along with a few other necessary ingredients, and he commenced to stir up a pitcher of genuine Kentucky mint juleps. The fellow was, of course, Ernest Hemingway.”

“Gentlemen, with that, and taking Captain Kirkwood’s snoring as a cue, I think that we need to ramble down to the hooch and hit the rack,” Major Hembee said, pulling himself from the lawn chair. “Screw the lid on that canteen of Blood of Dead Marines, Terry. Otherwise it could start a fire.”

Just as the major gave Kirkwood a slap across the sole of his boot, a flash as bright as daylight broke across the encampment, and a thunderous clap shook the air and the ground around the three officers.

“Incoming!” a voice shouted nearby.

Jon Kirkwood stood straight up, holding his M14, looking for an enemy target to engage.

“Slow down, Skipper,” Hembee said in a calm voice, taking Kirkwood by the shoulder. “We’ll just ease down to the operations bunker. Don’t want to do any shooting just yet.”

“What’s this, mortars?” O’Connor said, grabbing his rifle and hurrying behind the major and Kirkwood as they followed a trail into a nearby dugout covered in sandbags.

“Yeah, rockets, mortars, you name it,” Hembee said, calmly walking to a table where the staff sergeant he called Goose sat, his ear pressed to a field telephone as he quickly jotted notes on a legal pad.

“Sir,” Goose said, looking at the major now, “looks like they’re pretty much focused on the Americal positions. Could be they’re trying to divert us so they can hit the fuel dump.”

“Makes sense,” Hembee said. “We’ve got the reaction force deploying along that arc, in case.”

“What about the flank back this way?” Hembee asked.

“Pretty thin, but we still have some automatic weapons in place at two points that can cover it,” Goose said.

Hembee looked at Kirkwood and O’Connor and thought a moment before speaking.

“Care to get your feet wet?” the major then asked the two captains.

“We got our cherries broke this morning, sir,” Kirkwood said, “in case you’re looking to take our combat virginity.”

Hembee laughed loudly and put his arm around Jon Kirkwood.

“No, Captain,” the major said, hugging him with his arm, “I’m not trying to fuck you. I just have a little job and thought you might want to help.”

“Sure, Major Danger,” O’Connor said, slipping the sling of his M14 rifle over his shoulder.

“If you need some help, that’s a little different,” Kirkwood said, shouldering his rifle, too.

“I wouldn’t ask a couple of transient captains unless I felt that it was important,” Hembee said, and walked to a map of the two knolls that made up the terrain of Fire Support Base Ross.

“Charlie has hit the army units posted over here on the southwest side,” the major said, pointing on the chart with plastic overlays that showed gun and unit positions. “We’re back here, and pretty much out of danger. We’ve got our reserves, the reaction team, going hi-diddle-diddle to where the enemy seems to have hit hardest, what seems to be his main force. I’m just thinking we have a soft spot on this flank, and we have two machine guns at the corners, but not much in between. You game for sitting in a fighting hole, watching for Charlie to try to hit the wire down there?”

Kirkwood looked at the map and hesitated, but O’Connor snapped at the chance.

“Sure, Major, no sweat,” O’Connor said. He reached for a pouch of Beechnut laying on the field desk in the bunker and stuffed his mouth full.

“Good,” Hembee said, and then turned and shouted, “Rat, Elvis, Henry, get up here!”

Like mice dashing from a woodpile, the three men appeared within seconds, emerging from the busy corners of the combat command and operations bunker where operations, communications, and other associated Marines, jammed inside the subterranean confine, strived to get a handle on the attack.

“Get flak jackets and helmets for the two captains and then join them out on the flank,” Hembee said. “Kirkwood, you and O’Connor will man the fighting hole a few yards right of King Rat, Elvis, and Henry, who’ll haul out another M60 chopper. That’ll give us three .30-caliber machine guns along with individual weapons to cover that spot. We’ve got a field phone down in that hole. All you’ve got to do is pick it up and talk. You see anything start moving, get Goose on the horn. If you see any sappers going for the wire, start shooting. We’ll come running.”

While the two lawyers slipped on the helmets and flak jackets that Rat had brought them, Kirkwood took a long look at the three enlisted Marines already geared and ready, entrusted to the leadership of two green, boot officers. Then he glanced at O’Connor, beaming with his cheek bulging with tobacco and the straps on his steel helmet dangling like John Wayne playing Sergeant John M. Stryker on The Sands of Iwo Jima. He wondered if his partner and best friend had yet fully realized the risks and realities of stepping onto a combat line.