Don Pendleton - Council of Kings

"This is a hard-core regiment. These guys aren't farming by day."

"Probably sitting on enough ammo and supplies for the whole quadrant," muttered Bolan. "We can't do this alone. We'll do a sapper job on the place, then call in the choppers once the action starts."

"You do the perimeter, Mack. I'm going in to see if I can blow the ammo. Meet by that trail in an hour and a half."

Bolan was about to say, "No, I'll go in," but Buddy had already slipped into the swamp that lay at the foot of the ridge.

Bolan gave him five minutes and then snaked in himself. He felt the cool touch of the water as it slipped through his fatigues and surrounded his body. With only his eyes above the waterline, Bolan crawled toward the camp. The moon had set.

Bolan eased every thought from his mind. He was empty. He let everything of himself slip away.

He reduced himself to a presence. The water passed through him. He became pure killer.

Where the ridge rose from the swamp, Bolan slowed to almost imperceptible movement. In his mind he was Buddy's blade — a death that reflected no light.

He rose from the water so slowly he could feel the evaporation from his neck. Every nerve was vacant yet highly aware.

Ten feet away two guards sat in a shallow hole, looking at him.

Bolan's crawl toward them was agonizingly slow. They looked directly at him but could not see his form in the dark swamp. Bolan saw the outline of rifles in their laps.

Bolan lowered each hand carefully as he crawled, testing the surface before he let his weight press on it. He covered four feet in ten minutes.

An eternity passed. One of the guards moved his head, sending an alarm along the swamp crawler's spine. Bolan's hand came down slowly on something plastic. A claymore.

Bolan could smell the guards. He was five feet from their hole. He began to turn the claymore around, five degrees at a time, so that it faced the guards.

One guard turned to the other and spoke in a whisper. The second guard sat up listening, the claymore wires in his hands.

Bolan stopped breathing when he saw the wires.

His lungs began to burn. His heart pounded audibly in his ears.

Three feet away the guard's knees shifted in the blackness.

Nothing more was said. The two guards listened intently.

Bolan finished rotating the claymore and moved off into the blackness.

Then he turned two more.

Time was running out. Bolan finished the perimeter after an agonizing hour and then crawled into the camp to meet Buddy.

Bolan felt Buddy's breath before he heard him. The voice came in his ear, barely perceptible.

"I found the commander. He's copying something down on his map as the radioman gets it. They're giving out the locations of the VC regiments."

"Did you hear any of it?"

"Hear it? I'm going for the map, Mack."

"You've got a pair of brass balls, my friend."

"I always knew I'd die in this shit hole." Buddy slid off before Bolan could say anything more. Bolan's guts went cold.

Bolan crouched by the trail, knife in hand. He felt a centipede scamper up his leg, but remained motionless. It was not worth risking exposure to kill it. He could feel it work its way into his crotch.

A cry went up within the tunnels the instant that Buddy returned silently to Bolan's position. Someone had found the dead commander and radioman.

Adrenaline coursed through the two Americans as they ran away from the trail, into the brush. A claymore blew, sending a flash and a bizarre shadow through the foliage. Then another, and a scream, and then the AR's opened up. The VC were shooting at one another and the Americans were escaping through the perimeter. The firefight reared its head around them, cutting the jungle to tatters. Bolan jumped, doubled over, across a thicket, then heard Buddy grunt. He turned back, saw something that looked like Buddy on the ground, and then the VC rained heavy machine-gun fire across the distance that separated them.

Bolan crawled under the fire and grabbed Buddy's elbow, dragging him through a pool of viscous muck, part of which was Buddy's own vomit. The enemy were firing from two directions now; a crisscross of angry slugs whined hotly past in bright flashes.

Bolan picked up Buddy and ran as fast as his legs could pump. There was too much confusion to hear anything. He crashed through the brush with Buddy's guts leaking down his back.

"The dirty bastards," Buddy was chanting. "This dirty fucking war!" Finally he sank to his knees by the radio.

Bolan had circled to find the radio, and was breathless. He keyed the set quickly. He could hear the VC following the trail of Buddy's blood. They would be on top of him soon. With one hand over Buddy's mouth, Bolan gave the coordinates for an artillery hit, followed by another set for the Med-evac. Then he lifted the radio and Buddy and staggered away.

On the next ridge Bolan sat with the radio calling the coordinates again.

From far off he heard the booming of the big guns, then the blasts that shook his stomach as the big shells staggered up the ridge.

"East fifty... north thirty..." Bolan was waiting for the big one. The shell that would blow that ammo. "North another thirty," he said, and then it went. The sky cracked open. Bolan and Buddy lay side by side as the ground bucked beneath the roiling fireball. In the reflection of Buddy's glazed eyes Bolan saw the flames blossom.

"Buddy didn't make it, Mack," said Crawford. The lieutenant colonel was Bolan's commanding officer, but every man in Penetration Team Able was the CO's equal as far as Crawford was concerned. "He caught too many slugs. Too damn many."

The sun had risen, turning the shack into a steam bath. A portable fan blew fetid air at them. Bolan's eyes burned like coals.

"Where is he?"

"They shipped him out. He's going back to the States in a bag. Still has a father alive, I think."

Bolan said nothing. Crawford offered him a cigarette and then lit it for him.

"I'm not going on the next mission."

"Mack, we've all lost friends."

"I don't mean that. Buddy went in after a map he saw the commander drawing on. I bet he's still got it."

"No way. I emptied his pockets myself. Nothing. Except the letter from home."

"Then he swallowed it."

"Mack, come on now..."

"No way. Buddy knew he was going home in a bag... A field map is made of canvas and paper. The part of it that Buddy swallowed could still be undissolved in his stomach right now."

Crawford was about to reply, but said nothing. It was true about Buddy knowing he was going to die, of course. Everyone had seen the Mohawk. He tapped a pencil nervously on the desk.

"Let me call down to Saigon. I have a friend who works..."

Bolan cut him off. "I'm doing this personally. No more depending on someone else who doesn't care."

Crawford sighed wearily. "All right. This is going to take a lot of Vaseline. A lot." Crawford picked up the telephone and said to Mack, "Get a fresh uniform." Then, "Get me Colonel Winters."

The chopper landed with a lurch. That was what Nam felt like to Bolan, just as the lurch of a pickup was what New England felt like. He stepped out and looked across the tarmac at the depot, an immense corrugated metal structure shining in the bright sun like an airplane hangar.

Beyond it a transport lifted off, the heat of its exhaust turning the surrounding jungle into a shimmering blob of green. The depot was temporary; the jungle would win it back. Bolan never looked at the jungle without thinking about its inevitable victory.

The office jutted out from the side of the depot like an unwanted appendage. Everyone wore clean crisp uniforms. The place was calm, but eerie in its calmness; Bolan wanted out, though he did not give himself that choice.