by Scott Ely
The Tiger shot another round at Jackson, the bullet clipping the toe of his right boot. Jackson pressed himself even closer to the platform and thought about jumping out of the tree. Light shot again, one round. The Tiger replied with two.
Then for a long time there was silence. The birds returned to feed in the branches above Jackson’s head. Suddenly there were two simultaneous shots. Jackson listened hard to hear a body falling through the canopy. But there was nothing, only the cries of the birds circling over the canopy.
After waiting for what seemed like a long time, Jackson decided to try to go back down the rope ladder. If he could get off the platform, he would be shielded from the Tiger’s fire by the trunk. He started to back off the platform.
Bamboo splinters flew up in his face, the sound of the rifle reaching him an instant later. The bullet had been deflected by the platform. Jackson pressed his face against the smooth, cool bamboo and gasped for breath. Light shot one round.
Jackson lay on the platform and waited. His body was covered with sweat, and the muscles in his legs twitched. Light and the Tiger still exchanged fire, the sound moving off farther up the ridge. Always there were two shots, one quickly followed by another. Then for a long time there was no sound at all. A troop of monkeys passed through the canopy above him. The birds returned. Jackson decided to try to leave the platform again. Light had fucked up, and Jackson no longer wanted to be a decoy.
He backed off the platform, moving very slowly and keeping his body pressed flat against the bamboo. When he was off the platform and shielded by the tree trunk, he breathed a sigh of relief. A pair of rifle shots came from far away, the sound muffled by the trees.
Jackson sat down with his back to one of the buttresses and tried to decide what to do. He thought of going back to the firebase. Light had almost got him wasted. A single shot came from even farther off in the jungle.
He stood up and after a moment’s hesitation ran off in the direction of the sound. The Tiger would have a hard time hitting a moving target from the treetops, he reasoned. Twice he heard shots as he jogged through the forest, following a zigzag course on purpose, ducking behind trees, running at a crouch and all the time expecting to be shot by the Tiger at any moment.
There had been no more shots, and he wondered if the Tiger had escaped. Suddenly, someone reached out and pulled him to the ground behind a tree. At the same time the Tiger’s rifle cracked from the treetops, the bullet making a splat as it hit the trunk.
“Keep your fucking head down,” Light said. Then he paused and continued, “If this was night and I had the starlight, I’d have already wasted him.”
“Goddamn, he almost got me. You said I’d be all right,” Jackson said.
“You’re still alive, ain’t you? He was worried about me. Didn’t take the time he should’ve when he shot at you. Won’t nothing happen to you now either. Fooled me. Had another sniping station I didn’t know about.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“No, I got the trap waiting for him. We just gotta get him in the right tree. Right now he’s moving the wrong way. You stay here. Every few minutes fire a few rounds up into the canopy. I’ll go up the ridge and drive him back where we want him.”
Light left the cover and the Tiger tried a shot. Jackson noticed the bullet did not even come close.
Yeah, Light’ll waste that fucker, Jackson thought. Light’s the best.
Jackson stood with his back pressed against the tree trunk. He held the M-16 on automatic around the side of the trunk and without looking at his target fired off a magazine in the general direction of the treetops. When he replaced the magazine with a fresh one, he had trouble because his hands were shaking. He waited a few minutes and then did it again. Off in the trees he heard the crack of Light’s rifle. There was no reply from the Tiger’s rifle, and Jackson hoped Light had gotten him. Jackson watched the treetops, his neck already sore from looking up.
Light joined him at the tree.
“We got him moving the right way now,” Light said.
They followed the Tiger through the jungle. Light tried several shots at him but missed. The Tiger shot back once, the bullet missing Jackson’s head by inches.
“We got him now,” Light said.
Jackson lay with his face pressed into the leaves and gasped for breath.
Please, no more goddamn “Fish on the bank,” Jackson thought. I can’t fucking take any more of this.
Then they lay in the bamboo thicket on their backs. Light watched the top of a big tree. Jackson tried to follow Light’s eyes up into the treetops but could see nothing but a tangle of vines and leaves.
“Only way he can get a shot at us is from up there,” Light said. “He’ll be where that big limb comes off to the right and forks.”
Light pointed up into the tree, but Jackson could not even find the limb in the green tangle.
“Got him a bamboo platform built in the fork,” Light continued. “I got the trap set on the platform. We’ll see the branches move when he comes across on one of them Tyrolean traverses of his. Climb right over the trip wire. Won’t see it. Be watching us. Think we fucked up, lying out here in the open.”
Jackson did not like lying on his back, presenting his face as a clear target to the Tiger. A breeze stirred the leaves high up in the tree. Then Jackson thought he heard something moving in the tree-top but decided it was only a bird. He looked for the rope, but could not find it. It probably ran across to the next big tree thirty yards away, their canopies interlocking. Once the Tiger had come across he would be almost directly on top of them, the bamboo no longer providing cover.
They waited. It was like squirrel hunting, only he did not have to worry about remaining motionless. They were the target, the bait. It was all right to move. Already it seemed like they had lain there for hours. Jackson listened to the sound of his own breathing, which to his surprise was smooth and steady.
The branches shook, no bird this time, but perhaps a monkey. Then Jackson heard the creak of ropes. He looked up into the canopy but could see nothing except the branches moving. Light waited, watching.
Don’t let him find the wire, Jackson thought.
Jackson imagined at that moment the Tiger was getting ready to place one of those heavy, steel-jacketed bullets between his eyes. He looked at Light who still had his eyes fixed on the treetop.
Maybe he’s going to let him shoot me, Jackson thought. But no, Light had it all figured out. The Tiger was finished. Surely the sack was filled with frags, the trip wire tied to a pinless frag resting inside a C-ration can, just waiting for the Tiger to hit the wire and pull it out. Yes, that was it, the sack was filled with frags.
Jackson sucked in great gulps of air, trying not to make noise when he did it. Trip it, trip it now, Jackson thought. He imagined the sack hidden in the leaves over the bamboo platform. It was a good trap except for the decoy part. The Tiger would not escape.
Light looked at him and smiled.
Jackson thought about running, wondered what his chances would be. The next good cover was the trunk of the other huge tree, but he would have to run across thirty yards of open space, an easy target for the Tiger who might not even know they were there. Jackson concentrated on remaining very still.
The Tiger screamed. Jackson threw his hands over his head and pressed his face into the leaves to protect himself from the shrapnel. But there was no explosion. The Tiger came crashing down through the canopy. Light got up, and Jackson followed him.
A few feet from the body, Light stopped. Jackson started to walk past him to get a better look at the Tiger, who lay face down in the leaves, but Light put out his arm and stopped him.
“Careful now,” Light said.
Then Jackson saw it: long and green and thick as his arm in the middle, uncoiling itself from around the Tiger’s neck. It glided away, disappearing into a clump of bamboo, green vanishing into green. Light turned the Tiger over, a man who was a little more stocky than was
usual for the slender Vietnamese. The Tiger’s neck and the side of his face were black and swollen.
“Face’ll be blowed up as big as a watermelon and black as tar once the poison starts working good,” Light said. “Had that bamboo viper hung on a bootlace and tied to a piece of bamboo laid across a forked branch. He hit the wire, pulled the bamboo off the branch. Snake dropped right on him.”
“You’re the best,” Jackson said to Light, feeling like he was yelling “Amen!” with the people at home in church.
Thunder rumbled, and a gust of wind shook the canopy.
“Rains’ll come soon. Hale won’t have it so easy,” said Light. “Don’t worry. I’ll be out here looking after you.”
With Light in the lead, they moved down the ridge toward the hut. The thunder was closer now, and the sun had been swallowed up by the clouds, making it seem like twilight beneath the trees. Jackson was relieved that Tom Light the killer was back. No more spooks in the starlight scope, no more talk of going off over into Laos to live in lost cities.
Light led him back to the hut. Jackson sat on the ground exhausted. He looked at the toe of his boot where the bullet had made a groove in the sole.
“You take the starlight,” Light said.
Jackson gasped for breath.
“I don’t want it,” Jackson said. “What would I do with it?”
“You keep it for me.”
“You’ll need it.”
“I got the Tiger without it. They don’t have nobody better than him.”
Light put the scope in Jackson’s hands.
“You ain’t seeing the weird shit in it. You’ll be all right.”
Maybe it would be good to get Light away from the scope, Jackson thought. He didn’t want Light to go crazy.
“We still got a deal?”
“Yeah, you write my letters. I’ll keep you covered.”
“I’ll bring it to you when you want it back.”
“Don’t come ’ less I call. I ain’t killing no more. Dinks’ll be moving out here. I got to know you’re coming or they’ll waste you.”
Jackson put the starlight in his ruck and headed through the jungle toward the firebase. He wished he had not taken the starlight, which made a heavy lump in the bottom of his ruck.
CHAPTER
17
BEFORE JACKSON REACHED THE firebase rain began to fall, the start of the northeast monsoon. He walked back through thick clouds that had dropped down over the mountain.
Jackson reported to Hale in the TOC.
“Light wasted the Tiger,” Jackson said.
“Patrol reported the shooting. How come it took him so many shots? Thought Light was a good sniper,” Hale said. “Where’s the body?”
“Left him out in the bush.”
“He won’t get credit for that kill. Unless I see bodies, he won’t go on R&R again.”
Jackson wondered what Hale would say if he told him the reason Light had given up the starlight scope.
Hale went to work on his maps, and Jackson put his ruck under his cot. Then he squeezed the water out of his fatigues. It had been cold out in the bush, and he was still shivering. Labouf was asleep on his cot, having just come off a shift on the big radio. Jackson thought about waking up Labouf and telling him that he had Light’s starlight, but decided against it. Labouf would probably want to start selling looks at it.
When Jackson lay down to sleep, every time he closed his eyes he thought of the weird things Light claimed he had seen through the starlight.
Light’s going fucking bush happy, Jackson thought. Been out there too long.
But still he could not sleep. He got the starlight out of his ruck and, hiding it from the radio operator under his poncho, went out of the TOC. The rain had let up but the wind still blew steadily, bending the radio antennas on the TOC. Jackson climbed up on the sandbags.
He turned on the scope and looked at the camp. Everything seemed to be working all right. The bunkers were surrounded by sparkles of green light, and the raindrops made flashes across the scope. Jackson watched a soldier walk in from a bunker on the perimeter.
But when he turned the scope on the ammo bunker, he sucked in one deep breath and began to choke. On top of the bunker a tiny skeleton jumped about on the sandbags, waving its arms in the air.
“What the fuck,” he muttered as he put down the scope and gasped for breath. Then he brought himself under control thinking, goddamn “fish on the bank.”
But the tiny skeleton was still there, dancing frantically atop the bunker. Then the skeleton, its bones glowing in the dark, disappeared into the bunker. The spook had been much too small for a man, reminding Jackson of those glow-in-the-dark cardboard skeletons people put up during Halloween, except that this one had a tail.
Jackson walked slowly through the rain to the bunker. He tried to make himself breathe slowly but found it impossible.
Go back to sleep. Why’re you going to look for something that’s not there? he thought.
Then a voice sang, “If I don’t need you no more in this world/I’ll meet you in the next one and don’t be late. ’Cause I’m a Voodoo Child/Lord knows, I’m a Voodoo Child.”
Reynolds & Raymond, Jackson thought. Some of their crazy shit.
Jackson went into the candlelit bunker. Reynolds was playing his M-16. A monkey sat on Raymond’s shoulder, the outline of a skeleton painted on his body with fluorescent paint. The monkey could not sit still, jumping about and waving its arms and legs. Then Jackson noticed the frag in the monkey’s hand, one of the new kind shaped like a baseball.
“Sappers! Short-timer!” Raymond yelled.
Jackson watched the monkey pull the pin. The handle flew off with a clank, and the monkey tossed the grenade, the frag hitting the dirt floor with a thump and rolling toward him. Jackson started to run but tripped and fell, the clay wet and slick against his hands. Instead of the explosion, he heard Reynolds & Raymond laughing.
Raymond helped him to his feet. Reynolds replaced the handle and pin of the dummy frag. He gave it back to the monkey.
“Short-timer’s a smart little fucker,” Raymond said. “He’ll scare the shit out of the dinks.”
Short-timer jumped around the bunker, turning flips.
“Fucker’s speeding,” Raymond explained. “Loves the shit. Have to shoot him up twice a day.”
“What happens when he gets hold of some live frags?” Jackson asked.
“Oh, he’s been practicing with them too. Out on the perimeter. Needs to keep sharp. So we let him use one we took the detonator out of.”
Jackson picked up the starlight scope. Reynolds quit playing his M-16.
“Let me look at that,” Raymond said, stepping forward.
Jackson put the scope back under his poncho.
“That’s Light’s, ain’t it?” Raymond asked.
“No, it’s not.”
“Sure it is. Alabama, you don’t pull observation duty on the perimeter,” Raymond said. “Don’t need a starlight.”
“Light wouldn’t give up his starlight,” Jackson said.
“You give it to us,” Raymond said.
“Get your own.”
“Alabama, we need the starlight to bring back Jimi.”
“You are fucking crazy. I promised Light I’d keep it for him.”
“Just let us borrow it.”
“He didn’t say anything about lending it out. You got to talk to Light. Ask him.”
Reynolds had begun to play his M-16 again, Short-timer on his shoulder.
“How come you’re still alive?” Raymond asked. “Other guys go out in the bush. They get wasted. Does it with the starlight. Fucking magic.”
“Lucky,” Jackson said.
Raymond stepped forward and put his hand on Jackson’s poncho.
“Get the fuck away,” Jackson said, shoving Raymond’s hand away, holding onto the starlight tightly with the other.
Jackson started to back out of the bunker.
“We’ll hav
e that starlight,” Raymond said. “Go ahead. Hide it. Sleep with it. Put it in the money man’s locker. We’ll find it.”
Reynolds began to play his M-16 behind his back. Short-timer became excited and, jumping off his shoulder, began to turn flips.
Jackson left the bunker and ran toward the TOC, wondering where he could hide the starlight so Reynolds & Raymond could never find it.
After Jackson got back to the TOC, he wrapped the starlight scope in plastic to protect it from the water that had already begun to seep into the TOC and hid it under his cot. Hale had set a triple guard on the entrance and had threatened the guards with permanent duty on the fence if anyone, especially Leander, entered the TOC without his permission.
At least once a day Jackson checked to see if the scope was there. Then one night Jackson found the scope was gone, but no one had seen Reynolds & Raymond in the TOC. Jackson wondered if Labouf had discovered it. As he went to look for Labouf, he was met at the tower by Reynolds & Raymond. Light rain blew against his face.
“You take it back,” Raymond said, handing the starlight scope to Jackson.
Reynolds played his M-16, and Short-timer sat on his shoulder with a frag in his hand.
“It’s got the fucking strange shit in it,” Raymond said.
Reynolds sang, “Well she’s walking through the clouds/With a circus mind that’s running wild.”
“What strange shit?” Jackson asked.
“You seen it. That green light,” Raymond said.
They walked away, leaving Jackson standing in the darkness with the starlight scope.
Jackson looked through the scope, sweeping it slowly across the camp. Everything appeared normal, bunkers, gunpits, and wire—all with that green undersea look to them, sparkles of light flashing around their edges. He lowered the scope and turned it over in his hands.
Reynolds & Raymond are fucking crazy, he thought.
Then the big end of the scope began to glow like a TV screen. Holding the scope in both hands, his back to the wind and rain, he bent over the starlight.
The screen grew brighter, but the green glow did not hurt his eyes. An image took shape. A soldier was in a small bunker, but who he was and what he was doing there was not clear. Swirls of green light flickered across the screen. Suddenly the soldier and the bunker disappeared in the flash of an explosion. The scope went dark. Then another image took shape and Jackson watched it all over again, this time looking closely, trying to identify the soldier and what he was doing. He decided it was someone manning one of the big starlight scopes or a radar machine. There were only a few of these, all facing the ridge.