The American tried to make the motley pooch go back to the farm, but the rotten cur would have none of it. He chose James Harris the day he met him in Dogpatch, and he stubbornly stuck by his friend. While the mutt liked Huong well enough, he devoted himself to Harris. The black man could not make the animal return to the dwelling without risking that the noise he made urging the mongrel to stay home would awaken his two Vietnamese cohorts. So with a shrug, he allowed the pet to tag along.

Mau Mau knew that if he had awakened Huong, and the cowboy saw him trying to slip out, he might put a bullet in his head. On the other hand, if he returned from his mission holding an ear or finger along with James Elmore’s gold front tooth, proof that he had killed the traitor, Huong might very well scold him for his disobedience, but would likely congratulate him, too, for his success in exacting revenge.

With Turd sniffing the ground close at his heels, James Harris had sneaked out of the farmhouse, down the two steps to the bare-earth front yard, and slipped into the forest. However, as he stepped through the tall grass and into the trees, the incessant, loud croaking and buzzing of the thousands of frogs that lurked there went silent, spooked by his motion. The sudden quietness made the Marine deserter jump. He knew that as lightly as Huong slept, he might notice the change in the night sound and awaken. Anxiety sent Harris running, with Turd loping at his side.

After awakening and finding the dog and his master missing, Huong walked outside, leaned against one of the front porch’s four support columns, and lit a cigarette.

“He’s gone after that rat Elmo,” Bao said in Vietnamese to his brother, spitting as he said the traitor James Elmore’s name, and then lighting a cigarette. “Will you try to stop him?”

“What do you think?” Huong asked, looking at Bao.

“I say let the fool go,” Bao said, blowing out a breath of smoke. “Maybe he can kill Elmo.”

Both men stood on the front porch, saying nothing and thinking as they looked into the morning darkness and listened as the voices of the frogs slowly returned.

“I think maybe the Marines that patrol the fences at Chu Lai may very likely kill our foolish friend,” Huong said, clenching his cigarette in his lips as he spoke to his brother in their native language. “If Mau Mau remains lucky, though, the Americans may only capture him. That troubles me. I worry that he may talk of our plans and our money.”

“Then we should go after him,” Bao said, flicking his spent butt onto the ground in front of the two steps that led onto the wooden porch where he stood by his older brother.

“We have no hurry,” Huong said, and flicked his cigarette onto the barren yard, too. “I know where he is going. He told us yesterday, you may recall. Even if he runs the entire distance it will take him several hours to travel forty kilometers. We can drive near that place in thirty minutes, and maybe get a shot at the fool before the guards capture him. For now, I think I would like to drink some tea and eat a nice breakfast. It will take us a good while to drive to Saigon, once we finish our business here.”

Nearly an hour had passed before James Harris ever slowed his fast jog to a more comfortable shuffle. The sense that Huong may pursue him only moments away left his anxiety level high.

Finally the Chicago native stopped to catch his breath, and took several short chugs from a flat, round canteen of water that he had filled from the farm’s well and had thrown across his shoulder after he found it in the tool shack that morning. As he left the house, he had sneaked into the shed to retrieve a bolo knife with a foot-long inwardly curved blade that he had spotted several days earlier. When he had first examined the razor-sharp weapon, he considered that with one deft whack he could lob off James Elmore’s head with it. So as he departed that morning, he grabbed the canteen along with the knife and slipped it through his belt opposite the .45-caliber Colt pistol he had hanging on his other hip.

While in the shed, Harris had noticed a dusty, oil-stained, olive green tarpaulin covering what he had thought were only machine parts and other junk belonging to a dilapidated mechanical rice thrasher that sat next to the pile. At first he started not to look under the canvas, but then he thought that Huong’s Viet Cong relatives who lived there might have hidden some worthwhile weaponry there, too. As he folded back the cover he found a grit-caked gallon can of thirty-weight motor oil and a large wooden box filled with greasy parts to the thrashing machine. Next to them, however, he also discovered two dusty cases of sixty-millimeter mortar rounds and a wooden box with half a dozen dirt-covered fragmentation hand grenades nestled on a heap of corroded .30-caliber rifle rounds, their dingy brass casings turned green with age. Mau Mau had smiled as he grabbed one of the fist-size green bomblets and dropped it in the cargo pocket on the right leg of his utility trousers.

“Why you always on my ass?” Harris whispered to the dog as he knelt on the narrow trail that he followed south toward Chu Lai, and poured water in his cupped hand for the mutt to drink. Turd lapped the liquid with great thirst, and then shook a shower of slobber onto Mau Mau’s face.

“Damn, you dumb motherfucker,” the deserter said, wiping the splatter off his brow and cheeks with his upper sleeve and shoulder. “That’s some nasty shit, Turd.”

Screwing the lid back on the canteen, James Harris let it drop again to the rear part of his hip, where it rode suspended by its green webbed-canvas shoulder strap. Then he gave the bolo knife a tug to make sure it still held tight beneath his belt, patted the hand grenade in his cargo pocket, and set off jogging again as the new day’s gray light began to show color and expose form where moments earlier shadows and blackness had surrounded him. Ahead, he could now see a greater distance of the trail he followed.

While he ran, he tried not to think of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese patrols that haunted this stretch of countryside north of Chu Lai. Would they shoot a lone American deserter and his dog should he cross the kill zone of their ambush? Why waste all that on one man and a mutt? He considered the logic and pressed onward, gambling his safety on his Chicago street instincts and Turd’s innate sense of avoiding danger.

“Lance Corporal Wendell Carter,” the witness recited, speaking with a clear voice, just as the defense lawyer had instructed him to do.

“I see that you have recently been promoted from private first class to lance corporal. Congratulations,” O’Connor said, smiling at his leadoff witness.

“Yes, sir, thank you,” Carter answered, and beamed a smile, too. “My squadron CO pinned it on me the day before yesterday.”

“How long have you been on legal hold, Lance Corporal Carter?” O’Connor asked, stepping from behind the lectern to allow a barrier-free discourse of conversation to develop between him and the star defense witness.

“Three months now, sir,” Carter answered, and frowned.

“You miss your family, too, don’t you?” O’Connor asked.

“Oh, sir, I miss them real bad,” Carter said, shaking his head. “My mama, she pray for me every day, and just about everyone else I know in Houston, too. They all wanting me home.”

“So these three months on legal hold have taken their toll,” O’Connor said, shaking his head, too.

“I want to go home, sir, but I keep my attitude squared away. You know, I do what I got to do,” Carter said, and nodded at the captain to put emphasis to his words.

“It’s easy to let go and have your attitude slide downhill at times like this, isn’t it,” O’Connor said, nodding, too.

“Well, sir, my mama taught me to do my best, always, and let the good Lord sort out the difficulties,” Carter said and smiled.

“You got yourself promoted, even on legal hold,” O’Connor said, and walked back to the defense table and picked up his notepad, glancing at the top page. “Says here that your proficiency and conduct marks are 4.7 and 4.9 out of a possible 5.0, so you’re a pretty good Marine.”

“Sir, I pride myself at being a good Marine,” Carter said, puffing out his chest.

“I think if the prosecution wanted to investigate your record they would only find exemplary conduct, would they not?” O’Connor said, laying his legal pad back on the table. Then he walked back to the witness stand and put his hands on the rail surrounding the plywood platform.

“How many security patrols have you gone on during your tour?” O’Connor asked, and turned toward the jury as he spoke.

“More than I care to count, sir,” Carter answered, his eyes following the captain as he now stepped so that the witness’s face looked at the six men seated in the side gallery deciding the case.

“One a month?” O’Connor asked, crossing his arms.

“No, sir, more like five, sometimes six a month,” Carter answered.

“These patrols last how long?” O’Connor asked, holding the witness’s face toward the jury.

“Mostly overnight, but sometimes we get tagged with patrols that stay out for a week,” Carter said.

“You stand fire watch and guard duty, too?” O’Connor asked, now leaning his hand on the rail that surrounded the jury box.

“Yes, sir, that and perimeter watch, too,” Carter said, nodding at the captain.

“Oh, yes, that, too,” O’Connor said, glancing back at the jury.

“You’re a skilled radio repairman as well as a communicator, are you not?” the captain then asked.

“Yes, sir, me and PFC Anderson, we work together in the same shop over at Group Seventeen,” Carter answered.

“Well, if you’re on guard duty, fire watch, perimeter watch, and half a dozen security patrols a month, when do you work on radios?” O’Connor asked, and looked at the jury.

“I don’t get to do a whole lot of radio work, sir,” Carter said, shaking his head.

“Do the white Marines pull the extra duty that you do?” O’Connor asked, crossing his arms and frowning at the witness.

“Sir, I don’t worry about what the white Marines do. That’s how a guy ends up with a bad attitude,” Carter said, and shook his head. “It’s tough enough just pulling the tour and getting home. I don’t need to get my head all messed up thinking about what the other Marines get.”

“Your mama taught you that, too?” O’Connor asked, and smiled.

“Yes, sir, she did, as a matter of fact,” Carter said, and held his head up. “We live pretty poor. Just about everybody got lots more than we got. Times be I didn’t have shoes. Never had them in summer anyway. Save them for school. Then they be too little for my big old feet, so I take out the laces and try to get a few more miles out of them. Anyhow, my mama taught all us kids not to look at what other folks got, but thank God and my Lord Jesus that we got what we do. We had food, and we had a house. Not much more, but we did get by.”

“How well do you know the defendant, Private First Class Celestine Anderson?” O’Connor asked, walking toward the defense table where his client sat bound by chains.

“He my pea,” Carter said, looking at his buddy.

“Pea?” O’Connor asked and shrugged.

“Like peas in a pod, you know what folks say,” Carter said, trying to explain the colloquial term. “We close. Always do stuff together, live in the same hooch, come from the same hometown and all.”

“Buddies,” O’Connor offered.

“Yes, sir,” Carter nodded.

“So you know the defendant as well as anyone could know him?” O’Connor asked, walking behind Anderson and putting his hands on Celestine’s shoulders.

“He’s my brother,” Carter said and sighed.

“Not by blood but by friendship,” O’Connor said, offering clarification.

“In the larger sense we have the same blood,” Carter said, nodding his head. “Our African blood. Our slave blood. So we have a term we call each other, Blood. For that reason.”

“Right,” O’Connor said, walking from behind the defense table and approaching the witness stand as he spoke. “Pride in your heritage. Your common roots.”

“The struggle of our people to overcome oppression,” Carter followed.

“Do you feel oppressed?” O’Connor asked, and looked at the jury, focusing on the black staff sergeant seated on the end.

“You can’t be black and not feel oppressed,” Carter said, and looked at the staff sergeant, too, who nodded back at the witness. Then Carter looked at the captain. “Sir, we fight a war here to save these South Vietnamese people from oppression by the Communists, yet we brothers fighting in this war have to deal with oppression from our own country. You read the newspapers. You know what’s going on back home.”

“Yes, I do, Lance Corporal Carter,” O’Connor said, and looked at Charlie Heyster, who had his head down, writing furiously on his yellow legal pad.

“How often did PFC Anderson stand the same duties you described earlier to us?” the captain then asked, walking back toward the jury so they could see Carter’s face as he answered the question.

“I don’t think he ever get off duty,” Carter said, and laughed. “He stood more than me or any of the other black Marines in our unit.”

“Why did he stand more duty?” O’Connor asked.

“Objection!” Heyster spat, kicking his chair back as he jumped to his feet. “Your Honor, he is asking the witness to speculate.”

“Your Honor, I will rephrase my question,” O’Connor said before the judge could overrule him.

“Lance Corporal Carter, did your work section assign duty in an even distribution among all Marines?” O’Connor asked.

“No, sir,” Carter said, and looked at Charlie Heyster, “the gunny and I think the captain, too, they assign duty as punishment. A guy mouth off, he get shit detail for a week. Stuff like that.”

“Did Private Anderson have a problem mouthing off?” O’Connor asked, walking back toward the defense table.

“No problem at all,” Carter said, and laughed. “Celestine, he mouth off just about anytime he want. He never had a problem mouthing off. Controlling his mouth, well, sir, he did have a problem there.”

“As a result, he got every duty quota that came through the door,” O’Connor said, looking at the jury.

“Objection, your honor, speculation,” Heyster said, slamming his hand on the table where he sat.

“The witness can have firsthand knowledge of why Anderson was assigned duties, so I will allow it. As long as he testifies to what he has witnessed firsthand, then it is not speculation,” the judge said in his ruling. Then he took off his glasses and looked at Captain Heyster. “Could you please come here, Captain? I have a question.”

Charlie Heyster scowled at Terry O’Connor and walked to the judge’s bench, where he joined the defense lawyer in a private conversation with Colonel Richard Swanson.

“I’ve had enough of your surly attitude this morning, Captain Heyster. When you voice an objection, a clearly spoken word not shouted will suffice. We happen to be in the same room, and my hearing is excellent,” Swanson whispered to the prosecutor. “What’s going on with you?”

“Sir, I apologize,” Heyster said, and then curled his lips at Terry O’Connor. “The defense informed me yesterday that he would lead off with Private Anderson’s testimony, and I had prepared for his appearance this morning. The defense counsel’s trickery has left me somewhat unprepared for the current witness.”

“So you’re pissed off at the defense?” Swanson said, looking at Terry O’Connor, who fought to keep a smile off his face.

“Deceitful trickery!” Heyster hissed.

The judge looked at the papers on his desk, and then back at Heyster.

“According to the witness list that the defense has provided, Lance Corporal Carter’s name appears with two other witnesses before Private Anderson. Captain, you had ample notice. If you based your preparations on the order that the defense presents its witnesses, I think you should revisit your methodology,” the judge said, chiding the prosecutor.

“Sir, he told me yesterday that Private Anderson would lead off this morning,” Heyster pled, now leaning toward the judge for help.

“As far as I know, Private Anderson may or may not testify,” Swanson said, and looked at O’Connor.

“Sir,” the defense lawyer said, “I apologize for misleading Captain Heyster. He spoke to me after you adjourned yesterday’s session, and said some unkind remarks, using very brutal language. I have to admit that I responded in anger to his challenge against my client and what he would do to him once he got on the stand. I do apologize, sir.”

“Gentlemen,” the judge said, frowning at both captains, “as difficult as this may seem for you to understand, this is no game. We have no prize for the winner, no points or pennant to award. We only have losers if you let your petty, personal differences interfere with the justice we must strive to achieve in this man’s trial. Captain Heyster, I know your reputation, so don’t act so innocently violated. Captain O’Connor, I admonish you for lying to the prosecution, even in an unofficial manner through casual conversation. From here forward, you both will conduct yourselves with civility in my court. You will present your cases in a professional manner, respectful of all parties present. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Heyster said, and turned his eyes downward.

“Sorry, Charlie,” O’Connor said, and offered his hand for the prosecutor to shake. After a hesitation and a cool glance from the judge, Heyster accepted the defense lawyer’s gesture and then returned to his seat.

Terry O’Connor walked back to the jury and then looked at Wendell Carter.

“Private Anderson stood the majority of duty because he vocalized his frustrations?” the lawyer asked the witness.

“Yes, sir, to put it one way, he did,” Carter answered.

“Put it your way then,” O’Connor said, shrugging.

“Celestine he mouthed off at the gunny every time a brother caught shit,” Carter said, and looked at Anderson. “Most times it was none of his business, but he’d make it his business because most times a brother caught shit was because of his blackness.”

“Your Honor,” Captain Heyster said, standing from his seat, “the witness is speculating as to the reason why a brother caught shit, specifically because of his blackness. It’s clearly his opinion, and not a statement of what he witnessed.”

“Captain, I disagree and will allow the question and answer to stand,” the judge said, leaning forward and looking at the prosecutor. “The witness is testifying as to his perception of what occurred. Our truths are based on what we perceive to be true. Granted, the gunny’s motivations for dealing the extra duty to black Marines may have been different from what the witness perceived, but his own perceptions are what constitute the witness’s reality. What the witness represents as honest beliefs commonly held among himself and his peers as to his gunny’s motivations behind assigning the extra duty to black Marines are relevant.”

During the objection and ruling, Terry O’Connor had returned to the defense table and scanned his notes. Then he walked back to where Wendell Carter sat.

“Lance Corporal Carter, did you at any time believe that Celestine Anderson intended to kill Harold Rein?” the defense attorney asked, and stepped toward the jury box.

“No, sir,” the witness responded, following the captain with his eyes.

“The prosecution would like us to believe that you knew that Private Anderson meant to kill Private Rein, thereby using your actions to imply a sense of premeditation on the part of the defendant. They have presented several witnesses who say that you tried to stop Private Anderson from killing Private Rein. Why did you step in front of Private Anderson then, if you did not believe that he intended to kill Private Rein?” O’Connor asked, leaning against the jury box rail, waiting for another objection from Major-Select Heyster, this time for leading the witness with his question, but no objection came. Charlie the shyster busily scribbled notes on his legal pad and let the question stand.

“Those boys, Buster Rein, Laddie Cross, and the other two white Marines, they was trying to pick a fight with us,” Lance Corporal Carter said, glancing at each juror’s face. “I knew Celestine’s temper, and he would not back off a fight if somebody threw down on him. I figure that Buster going to walk up and sock Celestine in the nose, and that start a big fight. So I try to get Celestine to just ignore those boys. I step in front of him, so I can turn him around. Stop it from being a fight. I never dream he kill that boy.”

“What did Private Rein and the others do to try to start the fight?”

“They be calling us niggers, and porch monkeys, and coons, and stuff like that,” Carter responded, still looking at the defense lawyer and the jury. “They say they ain’t afraid of black power, and that when Buster Rein put that cigarette in his teeth and walk at us hollering, ‘Any you niggers got a light?’ ”

“What is your attitude about racial epithets and such slurs as they were using?” O’Connor asked, walking toward the witness stand.

“I don’t like hearing none of that stuff,” Wendell Carter said, shaking his head.

“Do you use any of those words?” O’Connor asked, resting his hands on the rail surrounding the witness stand.

“Some black people, they say them,” Carter said, shaking his head and looking at the jury, “especially the word, ‘nigger.’ I hate that coming out anybody’s mouth, black or white. I never say them names. The sooner people forget words like that life be getting a whole lot better for everybody.”

“What about Private Anderson?” O’Connor said, and walked toward the defense table. “He ever use those words?”

“Not as I recall, sir, no, sir,” Carter said, looking at his pal seated next to Wayne Ebberhardt.

“Before the incident, you and Private Anderson had made some plans, had you not?” O’Connor said, picking up his yellow legal pad and looking at notes he had written on it.

“Yes, sir,” Carter said, turning his face, following the defense lawyer as he walked back to the jury. “We supposed to get released from active duty a couple of months after we go Stateside. That was before that day at the chow hall last November. Anyway, we was going to take our bus fare home, and pool our pay and go join the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King and his crusade for civil rights.”

“You were going to just show up on Doctor King’s doorstep?” O’Connor asked, resting his hand on the jury box rail.

“No, sir,” Carter answered, looking at the jury. “One of Doctor King’s assistants, a preacher named Andrew Young, he wrote me back a letter after I wrote to them last summer when Celestine and I first talked about doing something for civil rights. Reverend Young said that we be welcome to join up. He said they could sure use a couple of good Vietnam veteran Marines.”

“So today, had this unfortunate event not occurred, you and Private Anderson would be with Doctor King’s campaign on this very Wednesday morning, isn’t that correct?” O’Connor said, wagging his legal pad in his hand as he spoke.

“Yes, sir,” Carter said, smiling. “We was supposed to get released from active duty on March first, so today being April third, we would have been with him at least a couple of weeks by now.”

“Do you dislike white people?” O’Connor asked, walking toward the witness stand.

“No, sir,” Carter said and smiled. “I know lots of white guys that’s real decent. I don’t dislike nobody unless they give me a reason.”

“What did you think of Private Harold Rein and Private Leonard Cross?” O’Connor asked, crossing his arms.

“I didn’t think much of those boys at all,” Carter said, frowning.

“You did know them before the incident,” O’Connor said, still holding his arms crossed, the yellow legal pad dangling from his hand.

“We seen them around, and heard plenty from them,” Carter said, still frowning.

“Care to explain that?” O’Connor asked, and walked back toward the jury.

“They always making trouble around black Marines,” Carter said and shook his head. “They see black Marines talking, dapping, or what have you, and they always looking to start some trouble.”

“Dapping?” O’Connor asked, looking back at the jury. “Please explain dapping.”

“That’s just a greeting, like when white people shake hands,” Carter said and looked at the jury. “It symbolizes friendship and unity among black brothers.”

“So it is not a symbolism of black power, meant to degrade white people, as the prosecution has asserted with its witnesses yesterday,” O’Connor said, smiling at Charlie Heyster and then at Wendell Carter.

“If it meant to degrade anybody, I wouldn’t do it,” Carter answered.

“So you would dap with a white Marine, too?” O’Connor asked, and walked to the witness stand.

“If he want to dap with me, sure I do it,” Carter said and smiled. “It’s a symbol of friendship, like I said.”

“Would you show the court by dapping with me?” the captain then said, putting out his fist for the witness.

“Yes, sir,” Carter said, and then put his closed hand above the lawyer’s. “My knuckles up here means that you’re not above me. Then when I put my fist under yours, it means that I’m not above you either. Then we rap on this side and that side, like this, and that means we are equal. We bang our knuckles like this, says we brothers. Then we put our fists across our hearts, pledging our friendship to each other.”

“What about when you put your fists in the air?” O’Connor said, raising his clenched hand above his head.

“We are brothers, united,” Carter said, raising his fist, too.

“Would you recommend that all Marines dap?” O’Connor asked, lowering his hand and walking back toward the jury.

Wendell Carter smiled.

“Yes, sir, I certainly would recommend it,” the witness said, and looked at the jury. “Marines are warriors. Great warriors. This salute come from the Masai, who are great warriors, too, in Africa. They kill a lion with a spear. This how they greet each other. I think it be a good thing for Marines to have something like that to use, too.”

“Thank you, Lance Corporal Carter,” O’Connor said, and walked back to the defense table.

“Do you have any questions for this witness, Captain Heyster?” Judge Swanson said, looking at the prosecutor flipping through several pages of notes he had taken during the defense examination.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Heyster said, and walked to the tabletop lectern, where he leaned across it and stared coldly at the witness.

“ ‘Chuck,’ ‘honky,’ ‘white bread,’ ‘cracker,’ ” Heyster began, “these terms mean anything?”

“I hear some guys say them, yes, sir,” Carter said, gripping the rail around the witness stand.

“What would you say if I told you I had witnesses who heard you and Private Anderson saying some of these very words,” Heyster said, still gripping the lectern and leaning over it.

“I don’t use those words, sir,” Carter answered, and then looked down. “They bad as saying ‘nigger.’ ”

“Yes, they are,” Heyster said, and stepped from behind the lectern. “Equally offensive. Now, will you categorically state for the record that you have never uttered these offensive racial slurs?”

“No, sir, because I have said some of them a time or two,” Carter said, still looking down. “Maybe when I got mad.”

“So what makes you different than Private Rein, when he called you a nigger?” the prosecutor asked, walking toward the witness.

“When I call him a Chuck, I guess nothing, sir,” Carter shrugged and shook his head.

“Did you see Private Celestine Anderson kill Private Harold Rein?” Heyster said, folding his arms. “Just a yes or no answer please.”

“Yes, sir,” Carter said, squinting his eyes closed.

“No more questions,” Heyster said, and walked back to the prosecution table and sat down behind it.

While Harris had fretted much of his journey, worrying about how he could sneak through the wire at Chu Lai, the task proved almost too easy for him. Spring rains had washed a low place along the ground, just deep enough so he slid on his belly beneath much of the barrier, out of sight of the bunkers and guard stations keeping watch. While Mau Mau crawled through the fencing, Turd sat in the weeds, watching him. Then when his master stood, and dusted off his clothes, the dog bounded under the barrier, carefree and his tail wagging happily.

Ahead, through the dancing mirage, the deserter could see the white hangar at the far end of the flight line where he felt certain that James Elmore now secretly worked, fabricating metal parts for airplanes. He knew this hangar well. Late last summer, while a newbee in Da Nang, Mau Mau’s gunny had sent him and three other airframe mechanics to Chu Lai to work for three weeks, helping out a shorthanded friend. Harris knew from that brief stint that this was the only maintenance hangar outside the main stream of traffic where CID could keep James Elmore working secretly. He smiled confidently, looking at the red and white checkerboard roof on the building, knowing well that the traitor worked inside.

As he ran, Mau Mau saw a familiar black Mercedes-Benz pull through an opening in the trees less than five hundred yards away, drive along a dirt road outside the fence line, and then park, hidden behind some tall bushes. Turd saw the car, too, and stopped to look at it. As the driver stepped out and walked to the front of the automobile, wading through the underbrush, the dog wagged his tail. He thought nothing of the rifle that Huong carried in his hands.

Behind and ahead of where Mau Mau Harris ran along the perimeter road, skirting the far end of the base’s runways and taxiways, red signs eight feet tall stood at the edge of the dirt track that ran parallel to the airfield’s boundary and read in great white letters, Restricted Area—Keep Out, in both English and Vietnamese. Maybe Huong would think twice before opening fire, the deserter hoped. Surely his old comrade knew that the shooting would draw attention from the guard posts overseeing this remote part of the compound. At the sound of rifle fire, they would come rolling like gangbusters, their guns blazing.

Then Harris considered that Huong could easily shoot him anyway and still make a run for it. Whether or not the reaction force that would doubtless pursue the pair ever caught Huong and Bao, he would still suffer the brunt of the bullets that the cowboy managed to launch at him. With no place to take cover, Harris leaned forward and ran hard.

From the corner of his right eye, Mau Mau saw Huong raise the rifle to his shoulder and aim at him. He clenched his jaws as he pumped his legs, waiting for the first bullet to strike. Then he noticed that the cowboy had taken the rifle out of his shoulder and now hurried back behind the weeds and bushes where he had hidden the car. A second later, he heard the whine of a GMC pickup truck’s engine and the clanking and banging of its body against its frame as it bounced across the ends of the runways and open terrain between them.

The deserter smiled as he saw the dirty green M880 truck with a three-foot-wide orange and white checkered flag flapping on a stick mounted to the rear corner of its cargo bed, an M2 .50-caliber machine gun stationed above its cab and a Marine wearing goggles holding on for dear life behind the gun. When the truck bounced onto the well-traveled dirt trail that ran along the airfield’s fence, it slid sideways and raised a cloud of calcium-rich dust from the crushed oyster shells packed onto the road’s surface.

At first sight of the pickup truck speeding cross-country toward them, Turd wheeled on his tail and made a mad scramble for the place in the fence where he and his master had crossed a few moments ago.

As the truck slid to a stop ten feet from where Mau Mau Harris stood, the Marine behind the big machine gun opened fire at the fleeing dog, sending geysers of dirt twenty feet in the air all around the mutt but nowhere near him.

“Cease fire, motherfucker!” a staff sergeant dressed in a jungle utility uniform screamed as he leaped from the passenger side of the M880 truck.

“Now, I like Little Stevie Wonder,” Mau Mau Harris said, smiling and wiping sweat off his face with a blue bandana that he pulled from his pocket and then tied around his head like a sweatband. “Don’t be insulting my favorite singer just cause he blind and your man can’t shoot worth shit, Sergeant.”

“What the fuck do you think you are doing out here?” the staff sergeant said to Harris, who kept smiling at him. “What part of Restricted Area—Keep Out do you not understand?”

“Hey, chill out, man,” Harris said, walking to the truck and pushing his thumb on the silver button at the base of a green water canister strapped to the side of the pickup bed, sending out a stream into his mouth and over his face. “I thought that meant people outside the base. Military is cool, isn’t it?”

“You’re lucky those guys over in that bunker between the parallel runways didn’t blow you away,” the staff sergeant said, walking to the water can and squirting out a drink, too. “Let’s see some identification.”

“Hey, man, I’m new here, I didn’t know,” Harris said, smiling and shrugging his best act, pulling his fake identification card from his wallet and handing it to the staff sergeant while the staff NCO examined his dog tags. “My name’s Sergeant Rufus Potter. I just got transferred down here from Da Nang Air Base. I’m over at Group Seventeen, working up yonder in that hangar in the fabrication shop. I came out for a little morning run, keep myself fit for the commandant, you know, and this looked like a pretty good spot for PT, so I went jogging up here. I didn’t mean nothing. Sorry to get anybody upset.”

“We can maybe let you slide, Sergeant Potter, since you’re new,” the staff sergeant said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “Just let me hold on to your pistol and that knife you got in your belt while we haul your ass up to that hangar and check you out. I want you to introduce me to your gunny, and let me talk to him.”

“That’s cool, man,” Mau Mau said, handing the weapons to the staff sergeant and then climbing in the back of the pickup next to the errant machine gunner.

“That your dog?” the Marine asked Harris as he saddled up next to him.

“Shit no, man,” Harris lied. “He probably belong to some gooners living outside the wire, and he just wanted to come run along with me, I guess.”

Suddenly Mau Mau slammed his hands on the roof of the truck’s cab just as the driver had pulled forward.

“Stop! We got Viet Cong over there!” Harris screamed, and began pushing the barrel of the machine gun toward the bushes where Huong and Bao had hidden in their black car.

“How you know they VC?!” the Marine lance corporal behind the machine gun screamed back, pulling Harris’s hands off the weapon’s barrel. “We can’t just go shooting at people outside the wire.”

“The dude got a rifle, man! You didn’t see it?” Harris said, looking down at the staff sergeant, who jumped out of the truck with an M16 rifle, raised it to his shoulder, and took aim at the bushes where Huong and Bao hid.

“I ain’t seen shit, Sergeant Potter!” the staff sergeant shouted, looking for the enemy.

“Two dudes over there!” Harris screamed, pointing at the bushes. “I seen one of them with a rifle. They VC, man. Open fire with this machine gun. We find that rifle when you kill the motherfuckers!”

Mau Mau then tried to push the lance corporal from behind the machine gun and open fire with it. The young Marine, with his goggles now askew, fought back, trying to hold control of the heavy weapon.

“Back the fuck off, ass wipe!” the staff sergeant screamed, climbing in the back of the truck and pulling Harris’s hands off the tailpiece of the machine gun before he could release a burst of fire.

“Look, motherfucker, now they getting away!” Harris whined in a loud voice as he watched Huong tromp the gas on the Mercedes and speed down the dirt road.

“Radio the reaction squad, Corporal O’Brien!” the staff sergeant shouted, leaning over the truck cab and looking inside the driver’s window.

“Shit, man, they be long gone now,” Harris said, shaking his head and seeing the black car disappear.

They had packed ample food and water, and all of their belongings and money, but to Huong’s dismay he had badly underestimated Mau Mau Harris’s ability to traverse forty kilometers of countryside crosshatched with rice canals, fields, hedges, and fence lines, not to mention dodging Communist and American patrols. The cowboy had hoped to ambush Mau Mau as he crossed the road outside the military base, and then speed off to Saigon with his brother.

Although disappointed that he had missed killing his former comrade, Huong felt good that the dog had escaped. He liked Turd, and seeing him again flee well ahead of danger, outrunning the erratic bullets, he regarded him as a powerful carrier of good fortune. However, with Harris now a matter of the past, Huong decided to change the name of this good dog to something better. Even for a no-account cur, the cowboy certainly would not insult him by calling him a name like shit.

While he fashioned the hunk of steel, the slack-minded Marine gazed across the runways at the flight line where A-4 attack jets sat, parked between high stacks of oil barrels that protected the planes from enemy rockets and mortar shells. Their bird-shaped bodies shimmered, taking on an almost liquid appearance in the distorting mirage generated by the scorching sun. As Elmore dreamily watched the heat waves dance across the runway matting, asphalt, and concrete that covered the ground, he noticed a speck of a person and a dog plodding along the perimeter road toward the aircraft maintenance and fabrication hangar where he worked.

Elmore had begun boring holes in the flat metal plate for a helicopter gun mount when he first noticed the ambling gait of the Marine and the mangy brown mutt lumbering at his side. Even at more than a quarter of a mile distance, the jogger had a haunting look about him that made the tattletale nervous.

His heart started to beat more quickly as his mind began to place this gangly black Marine who drew closer and closer. Could it be him? James Mau Mau Harris?

Then, when the guard vehicle slid to a stop by the running man, and the men had their brief conversation, followed by the runner casually getting a drink of water and then climbing inside the back of the guard vehicle, hitching himself a ride, all of the Marines acting friendly to each other, Elmore relaxed. He focused his attention back to the square hunk of metal and bored more holes where he had drawn red ink marks, laid out from a master template. To him these days, nearly everyone at first looked like James Mau Mau Harris, or worse yet, Brian Snowman Pitts.

Anymore, with so many weeks of worrying about the two notorious deserters finding him, and each time he thought that he saw one of the deadly duo and it always turned out to be just another Marine, he began to more easily discount his fears. He reassured himself as he bored the hole in the steel that had Mau Mau Harris shown his face on the flight line—or at any other American base in the Da Nang and Chu Lai areas, for that matter—military police would have descended on him like a cloud of locusts and clapped him in chains. They certainly would not have had a casual conversation on the flight line with the fugitive, nor would they have offered the scoundrel a ride, much less given him a drink of their water.

As James Harris jumped from the back of the truck, he held his hand firmly against his cargo pocket to keep the hand grenade from bouncing out. Then as he walked through the entrance, too, he shoved his hand inside the pouch on his leg and wrapped his fingers around the small fragmentation bomb.

James Elmore stood at the drill press, next to one of the hangar’s large, multipane side windows, the light streaming on him. Mau Mau Harris saw the traitor’s eyes grow wide and his mouth drop open, a high-pitched scream echoing through the high building.

“Grenade!” a voice behind Mau Mau shouted, and Marines everywhere dove for cover. All except James Elmore, who stood wide-eyed, his mouth agape and still screaming.

Mau Mau Harris laughed as he yanked the pin from the hand grenade and threw it like a fast-pitched baseball straight at the pigeon who had ratted him and Brian Pitts out, and had caused the death of Wild Thing.

Instinctively, James Elmore put up his right hand just as the green, explosive ball hurtled at him. The smooth metal stung the palm of his hand as he caught the object, and the sharp edge of the fuse end of the grenade cut two of his fingers as he closed them around it.

For several seconds the shocked Marine stood paralyzed in fear with the explosive device wrapped by his hand. Then his senses came to him and he shrieked.

“Motherfucker!” Elmore screamed, and threw the hand grenade through a glass windowpane behind the drill press and dove flat on the concrete floor.

Seconds passed and nothing happened. Then Marines in the hangar began to stand up and dust off their trousers. The staff sergeant ran full force at Mau Mau Harris, who now fled toward the open door, and knocked the fugitive to the ground while his two assistants wrestled the deserter’s hands behind him.

“Tie this goofy motherfucker up, and somebody call the provost marshal!” the staff sergeant growled.

“Don’t you know who that son of a bitch is?” James Elmore cried, dancing on his toes, pointing at the prisoner.

“He says his name is Sergeant Rufus Potter, and so do his dog tags and ID card,” the staff sergeant said, and looked at Elmore. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“That’s Mau Mau Harris, man,” Elmore wailed. “He come here to murder my ass. Throw that grenade at me. CID look all over Da Nang for him and a dude name Brian Pitts. Pitts be the Snowman, and kill people and sell dope and shit. This guy here, that his main man. He want kill me to shut me the fuck up.”

“Fucking dud grenade,” Harris grumbled with his cheek pressed against the concrete floor. “Someday I still kill your ass, you rat weasel motherfucker. If I don’t do it, Snowman, he do it. Maybe even one his cowboys. You ain’t safe no more, nowhere, Elmore.”

“How you know I be here, man?” James Elmore squealed, still dancing on his toes. “They rat me out?”

“Yeah, man,” Harris laughed. “They tole me you down here in da Chu Lai, fabricating metal. What else they be doing with your rat ass no way?”

“Who tole you that, man? Who they?” Elmore cried.

“Cops, man, they tole it all,” Harris said with a laugh, the side of his face against the concrete and the staff sergeant’s boot standing squarely between his shoulder blades. “They take payoff like anybody else. Money open doors, show the way. I got me this nice Viet Cong bolo knife that this staff sergeant done took. I sharpen it all up to cut me some pigeon. I guess now Snowman or his buddy Huong be cuttin’ that pigeon. Pigeon name Elmore. Give you what they tole you they do, pull your traitor tongue out your throat. Ain’t no place anybody keep you that we ain’t gonna find your rat ass, you turncoat motherfucker.”

Suddenly a deafening boom erupted outside and blew the entire frame of panes inward from the big window behind the drill press, sending glass shards spraying across the concrete floor. The staff sergeant dove on top of Mau Mau Harris, while everyone else jumped for cover where they could find it.

“Shit, man,” Harris grumbled. “Slow-ass, greasy, nonworking, Viet Cong fuse on that grenade, I guess. You one lucky motherfucker, Elmore, you know that? Only that luck run just so deep. Nobody be forgetting what you done. Ever.”

“Mau Mau!” James Elmore now pled, rising from the concrete to his hands and knees and spreading a wide smile at his prostrate nemesis, his gold front tooth sparkling as his lips quivered around it. “I ain’t saying shit, man. Not now, not no more. You gots to tell Snowman I ain’t saying shit.”

With the culprit’s hands tightly bound with nylon parachute cord, the staff sergeant yanked James Harris to his feet and shoved him at the two Marine guards, who each took an arm. As they led him out the hangar door, Mau Mau looked back at James Elmore and laughed.

“You one dead-rat-motherfucker,” the deserter snarled, and then he hawked a mouthful of spit at the cowering snitch. The glob sailed in a high arc but fell short of the target, splattering on the floor.

For a while, James Elmore only stared at the wet splotch on the concrete. Then his stomach turned from the shock of the morning’s ordeal, and he raced to the head to upchuck his breakfast.