by David Drake
The newcomer, a woman in coveralls, squinted into the dim lounge. She glanced at the group around Bradley, then ignored them. When she saw the stocky man at the far end of the bar, she strode forward.
The sudden smile made her almost attractive.
Bradley's hand closed on his fresh drink. "If there's still one weasel left in the universe," he said, "that's too many."
"Sar'nt?" murmured the drunken blond. "Whyn't you'n me, we go somewhur?"
"Hey, cap'n" said the big woman to the man at the far end of the bar. "Good t' see you."
"Go 'way, Sie," he replied, staring into his mug. "You'll lose your rank if you miss lift."
"Fuck my rank," she said. Everyone in the lounge was looking at them. "Besides," she added, "Commander Goldstein says the Dalriada's engines 're broke down till we get you aboard. Sir."
She laid the man's right arm over her shoulders, gripped him around the back with her left hand, and lifted him in a packstrap carry. He was even bigger than he'd looked hunched over the bar, a blocky anvil of a man with no-colored eyes.
"You're always gettin' me outa places I shouldn't a got into, Sie," the man said.
His legs moved as the woman maneuvered him toward the door, but she supported almost all of his weight. "Worse places 'n this, sir," she replied.
"They weren't worse than now, Sie," he said. "Trust me."
As the pair of them started to shuffle past the group near the door, the woman's eyes focused on the uniformed man. She stopped. The man she held braced himself with a lopsided grin and said, "I'm okay now, Sie."
"Who the hell are you?" the big woman demanded of the man wearing the Headhunter uniform.
"What's it to you?" he snarled back.
"This is Sergeant Bradley of the 121st Marine Reaction Company," said one of the enlisted men, drunkenly pompous.
"Like hell he is," the big woman said. Her arms were free now. "Top's searching bars down the Strip the other direction, lookin' for Cap'n Kowacs, here."
Kowacs continued to grin. His face was as terrible as a hedge of bayonets.
The group around "Sergeant Bradley" backed away as though he had suddenly grown an extra head.
The imposter in uniform tried to run. Sienkiewicz grabbed him by the throat from beyond. "Thought you'd be a big hero, did ya? Some clerk from Personnel, gonna be a hero now it's safe t' be a hero?"
The imposter twisted around. A quick-release catch snicked, shooting the knife from his left sleeve into his palm.
Sienkiewicz closed her right hand over the imposter's grip on his knife hilt. She twisted. Bones broke.
The knife came away from the hand of her keening victim. Sie slammed the point down into the bar top, driving it deep into the dense plastic before she twisted again and snapped the blade.
"Big hero . . ." she whispered. Her expression was that of nothing human. She gripped the weasel-tail stole and said, "How much did these cost 'cha, hero?" as she tore the trophies away and flung them behind her.
The bartender's finger was poised over the red emergency button that would summon the Shore Police. He didn't push it.
Sienkiewicz' grip on the imposter's throat was turning the man's face purple. Nobody moved to stop her. Her right hand stripped off the uniform sleeve with its Headhunter insignia and tossed it after the stole.
Then, still using the power of only one arm, she hurled the imposter into a back booth also. Bone and plastic cracked at the heavy impact.
"I'm okay, Sie," Kowacs repeated, but he let his corporal put her arm back around him again.
As the two Headhunters left the Red Shift Lounge, one of the enlisted men muttered, "You lying scum," and drove his heel into the ribs of the fallen man.
Kowacs found that if he concentrated he could walk almost normally. There was a lot of traffic this close to the docking hub, but other pedestrians made way good-naturedly for the pair of big Marines.
"Sie," Kowacs said, "I used to daydream, you know? Me an old man, my beard down t' my belt, y'know? And this little girl, she comes up t' me and she says, 'Great Grandaddy, what did you do in the Weasel War?' "
"Careful of the bollard here, sir," Sienkiewicz murmured. "There'll be a shuttle in a couple minutes."
"And I'd say to her," Kowacs continued, his voice rising, "Well, sweetheart—I survived.' "
He started to sob. Sienkiewicz held him tightly. The people already standing at the shuttle point edged away.
"But I never thought I would survive, Sie!" Kowacs blubbered. "I never thought I would!"
"Easy, sir. We'll get you bunked down in a minute."
Kowacs looked up, his red eyes meeting Sienkiewicz' concern. "And you know the funny thing, Sie," he said. "I don't think I did survive."
"Easy . . . ."
"Without weasels t' kill, I don't think there's any Nick Kowacs alive."
The Way We Die
Seems like the rain falls harder since we crossed the line from War Zone C. Harder and more regular—start about 1700 after we laager up for the night, then rain like a son of a bitch for the next two hours. In Cambodia they don't hold the command meetings at 1900 any more, they just wait for the rain to stop. Then Lieutenant Brown with his big eight-track recorder pops out of the hatch of Two-zero—that's the platoon's only Sheridan now—and walks over to the command track in the center of the laager.
The rain sure comes down, don't it? Oh, you get used to it after you've been in-country a while. Some other time I might strip and shower in it. Not right now.
It was bright sun this morning when Flip died.
Looked like we were really going places when they let us cross the border, you know? Really going to get COSVN and end this fucking war. Maybe we got close at Snuol, I dunno. That's the only time the dinks dug in and fought back. Other than that, it's all been mines and automatic ambushes. Mines from them and AAs from us.
At Snuol the dinks got two tracks and we got four fifty-one cals. We got Lieutenant Brown, too.
Lieutenant Golightly, the old platoon leader, was dusted off with some shrapnel from a B-40 in him. The rocket hit his Sheridan when it was already stopped and everybody was bailing out of it; woulda been a bad scene otherwise.
Ever see a Sheridan burn? Naw, you're too green.
The Colonel's bird brought Lieutenant Brown in that night. Lieutenant Golightly had been pretty popular, but I don't know that put anybody against Lieutenant Brown.
Flip 'n me watched Brown get off the chopper with both hands full of gear, ducking low because of the blades. He was a little fella, slim in the waist but with broad shoulders for his size. No kid, either. He looked pretty near thirty. Word is he made staff sergeant before going to OCS. Red hair and a moustache he started growing just after getting in-country; it still looked ragged.
"Hey, lookit that, snake!" Flip said to me. "Sprouting hair like that, he'll be a good dude."
Bad guess, that.
The first thing Brown said to us was, "My gear's on the pad. A couple you guys carry it over to my Sheridan."
As he started to walk off I said, "Ah, which one, El-Tee? We combat-lossed Two-two this morning, that was Lieutenant Golightly's track. There's Two-zero and Two-one left."
"Either one, dammit," he says. "Just get my gear under cover before it starts raining again." And he walks off toward the command track.
Flip and me looked at each other, then lugged the gear over to Two-zero. I was track commander for Two-one, 'n Flip was my driver. Neither of us figured we wanted to share the car with the new el-tee after all.
A Sheridan's bigger than an ACAV but it doesn't have as much room inside. An ACAV's just an aluminum box on treads. The TC's got a cal fifty in his cupola, and there's two swivel-mounted M60 machine guns for the rest of the crew. With only machine gun ammo and personal gear inside, there's room enough for all three of the guys who aren't pulling guard to rack out at the same time.
Sheridans're tanks. The hull is aluminum, sure, but it's got a big steel turret in the middle with
a one-five-two millimeter main gun.
That gun's the worst thing about a Sheridan, worse 'n the unarmored belly that nearly rubs the ground. Some bright boy figured out that the brass case holding the gunpowder takes up a lot of room. If you make the case so it burns, you could hold thirty shells in a Sheridan instead of maybe twenty.
Only the bright boy didn't figure out what might happened to them thirty bare charges if something started a fire in the turret. If a B-40 hit the hull, for instance, or if you ran over a mine big enough to punch a hole through that little thin floorplate, or if somebody screwed up and set off a grenade inside the hull.
Ever see a Sheridan burn?
With all them big shells inside, there's not room for much else. Our gear goes in the bustle rack, the mesh trough around the back of the turret. Since it's out in the wet, you can't just carry your socks in a duffle bag. You either put your gear in empty ammo cans or you might as well leave it back at Quan Loi for all the good it'll do you in the field.
Lieutenant Brown didn't have more in his duffle bag than'd fit in the two Minicans Lieutenant Golightly left behind, but there was this big eight-track tape recorder besides. It was a beauty, about $400 worth, but a hell of a thing to bring to Cambodia. It weighed near thirty pounds, and it was a good foot and a half square.
We set the recorder on the front slope of Two-zero while we broke the news to the crew that they were the new el-tee's track.
We'd thought maybe the new guy'd want to ride an ACAV instead. There's six ACAVs and three Sheridan's in a platoon—full strength; we were already down to five and two—so the platoon leader's got a choice. Sheridans have the firepower, which is nice; but a lotta guys wouldn't ride on one for a bet.
It takes a while to get used to all that bare gunpowder down below you. A lotta things don't seem important after you been in-country a while, though.
Flip started screwing with the recorder while we waited for Lieutenant Brown to come back. Nothing happened when he pushed the buttons.
"Hey, snake," I told him. "This thing don't have batteries. You gotta plug it into the wall."
Brown came up beside us then, so fast I didn't know he was there until he grabbed Flip by the shoulder and spun him around. "What do you think you're doing, soldier?" he says.
"Hey, steady on, El-Tee," Flip said. "We were just looking—"
Brown pushed Flip back against the track. I'd never seen an officer get so mad before. "Listen, punk!" he shouts. "I'm not 'hey,' I'm not 'el-tee.' I'm 'sir' or I'm 'Lieutenant Brown,' and that's what you'll call me every time. Is that understood?"
"Sure, Lieutenant Brown," Flip mumbled.
Flip was pretty surprised, even more 'n the rest of us. He was always a little runt, even back home in High Point when we were kids. Flip never got into fights, just acted easy-going and didn't believe that anybody really wanted to start something. He was the last guy in the world to get jumped like that.
Brown walked back to the command track. He took the recorder with him. Thought we might still want to mess with it, I guess.
We didn't say much after he left.
I had my own run-in with the man a couple days later.
We'd found a trail through the jungle. It didn't seem to get much use, but you never can tell how Charlie'll try to slip the next load of rockets south. Like I say, after Snuol, it's all been mines and automatic ambushes. We radioed back to troop headquarters, and the CO told us set up an AA.
Brown had never seen a real automatic ambush. He watched close while we strung the tripwire and placed the Claymore mines at intervals along the trail. If some dink comes di-di bopping into the tripwire, all the mines go off at once.
There's two pounds of C4 explosive in each Claymore. That blows a charge of BBs out across the trail like a big shotgun. When a dozen go off, KABAM! You've got everybody for fifty yards from the tripwire lying right there for you in the morning.
"Pretty slick, huh?" I said to Lieutenant Brown.
He grunted. "They told us at training school how it was done."
Newbie school, he meant.
"You know there's enough C4 in those Claymores to blow an ACAV clean over on its back?" I said. "That's just what the dinks'd do with it if they spotted the AA before they hit the tripwire. So we got a trick to fix that."
I took the doctored frag out of my pocket. I'd already unscrewed the time fuze and replaced it with the igniter pistol from a demolition set. That way when the handle of the grenade flies up, instead of starting a five-second fuze, it goes bang right away.
This was sorta my job. The rest of the platoon backed off.
I knelt down and used my bayonet to dig a fist-size hole for the frag. I put the last claymore over it, setting the spikes in tight so the mine'd hold down the handle of the grenade after I pulled the pin. Then if the dink tried to lift the Claymore, the grenade'd blow him to hell with a silly expression on his face.
Brown looked funny when he saw what I was doing. Then he put out his hand and said, "You aren't going to boobytrap that, are you?"
"Sure," I told him. "We always do it this way. Sometimes we just set an ammo can full of rocks beside the trail with one of these—" I tapped the frag "—under it. Look, if you get nervous, you can move back with the other guys, but the fact I'm still here proves I never stepped on my dick doin' it yet."
Brown didn't laugh. He got so red in the face I couldn't hardly see the freckles. The two bandoliers of ammo for his M16 rustled as he took a breath.
"Put that goddam grenade back in your pocket," he says. "The first thing you do at troop is put the time fuze back in it like it's supposed to be. And you never—never—think of boobytrapping an automatic ambush again."
"But sir," I says, "it keeps the dinks—"
He cut me off. "Don't argue with me, shithead!" he snarls. "What's going to happen when you want to take them down in the morning? Or don't you know you can't leave AAs set up more than overnight?"
I was getting pissed too. "Up here there aren't any friendlies walking around," I said. "Anybody steps into an AA had it coming to him. There's no point in setting 'em up every night and taking 'em down every morning for fear some papa-san'll drive his buffalo into one of 'em."
"One more word!" he shouts. "One more word and you got six months in Long Binh Jail to wonder where your stripes went to. Want to try me, soldier?"
I mighta popped him—I'm not like Flip—but he'd've had my ass in the LBJ and no mistake. I just looked away and set up the remaining mine over the hole that should've had the frag in it. Back at the NDP, I put a regular fuze back in the grenade, but I kept the igniter pistol.
I didn't figure Brown'd last forever. I mean, he's flat-assed crazy.
Well, I guess you could say anybody is, after a while out here, but . . . .
Anyway, it don't mean nothin'.
Even Captain Richie, he got pissed off about the way Brown is with his recorder. It's got an adapter so he runs it off the Sheridan's batteries. He built a bracket for it inside the turret. If you climbed onto Two-zero when he wasn't there, he'd come nosing around in a couple minutes to make sure you weren't fucking with his toy. And every night he takes it with him to the command meeting.
Except for the drivers, nobody rides inside a track over here, especially if it's a Sheridan. And in this troop we don't fight the main gun except when we're pulling perimeter security back at the firebase and there's a dirt berm to keep B-40s outa the hull.
The loader's got a machine gun welded to the top of the turret. He sits on the hatch cover—some guys have regular seats welded there—and doesn't have a foot inside the track while we're moving. The TC, that's me, has a cal fifty in the cupola. There the red handle to fight the main gun, too, but that's one shot only: nobody expects the loader to be inside the hull until things've quieted down again.
So the recorder sitting on top of the ammo didn't really matter in a firefight; only you would've figured a guy like Brown to think so if somebody else did it.
; Last night . . .
I guess last night was what really sprung it.
We had regular guard shifts on Two-one. Me first because I'm TC; Chico and Billy, the loader and the back deck gunner, second and third; and Flip last because that's the second-best slot and he's got next most time in-country after me.
It was about 1930. I was up in the cupola, looking out at the jungle beyond my machine gun, and Flip sat on the turret beside me, smoking a joint. It was the regular kind, the Cambodian filtertips. They come in packs of twenty-five with a picture of a marijuana plant on the front and a lot of the squiggles that pass for writing in Cambodia. It didn't matter, you see, because there was no way the dinks were going to hit us that night, and Flip had last guard anyway.
