Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

And that had made him nervous, sure enough.

Turning east, they flew into the mountainous region south of Luang Prabang. These weren’t the mountains Carter was familiar with from his youth, growing up in Colorado. The mountains he’d explored as a kid were mostly outcroppings of solid rock, with evergreens sprouting in the foothills. Those trees’ acidic needles kept the undergrowth to a minimum in the thin soil. No, these mountains were covered with lush growth from base to summit. They always reminded Carter of some kind of prehistoric jungle lost in the folds of time. If he’d seen a pterodactyl wheeling across the sky he wouldn’t have been surprised. There were all sorts of creatures down there — though not dinosaurs — and they were plentiful. Just about every manner of creeping crawling thing was well represented down below the upper canopy, some of them extremely dangerous.

For some reason, Carter wasn’t worried about the fauna. He tried to shake away the nagging internal voice, the sound of…

“About five minutes to insertion,” the pilot yelled back over the seats, displaying the five fingers on his hand to make sure he was understood above the noise.

Carter nodded and took a quick inventory of his equipment, for the hundredth time. He sighed and crosschecked Kane, making sure his gear was secured as well.

The Huey and its escorts came in low. They weaved between the looming mountains, cutting their path above the valleys like a river carves its own channel through living rock. The full moon was above, but there was no light from below. No sign of a nearby village, or hootch, or any people at all. And nothing to give any indication that they were near anything like an NVA military base, if that’s what they were looking for. All of which was relatively good.

“Here you are,” the pilot called out like a New York cab driver, giving Carter and the others a thumbs up. He held the Huey hovering above the wavering treetops.

Carter grasped the steel bar and leaned out the open door, staring down into the sea of blackened greenery. It was dark as midnight down beneath the triple canopy, but below that their newfangled night-vision gear would help them avoid breaking their legs when they reached the ground.

He deployed the clumsy and heavy Soviet PNV-57 night vision goggles that had been slung around his neck. He wished they could be using US-made SU49 NVGs, but they were incognito and all tell-tale gear had been nixed. He hated wearing these damned Soviet albatrosses. They felt like strapping a brick to his face and another to the back of his head, but they mostly did the trick in extremely low light — working on the same principle as a green eye. Down there where there were only the faintest traces of moonlight, there was enough light filtering down to make the goggles useful. Under a full moon like tonight’s, however, the goggles were next to useless. Above the canopy they’d be blind. Once below it, the goggles would give them what they needed. The Yards would be going in without the night gear — their eyes were accustomed to the jungle’s blackness.

Carter signaled to Jek, and the Yard fast-roped from the slick into the jungle below. Next was Phut Two, followed by Mock, then McBride, Kane, Phut One, and finally Carter himself took to the wire and dribbled downward like a spider weaving a web.

When he reached the jungle floor, the rest of the team had already set up a small perimeter around the insertion point. The three choppers wheeled away, heading back to CCC, as soon as he touched ground. The thunderous din of their spinning blades faded slowly and soon the raucous nocturnal jungle fauna had once again taken over.

The mosquitos were on him immediately, and Carter slapped one that was tickling the hairs on his neck. He could feel its not-so-tiny crushed body curled beneath his fingers.

Goddamn insects. They made life in the bush miserable. And then there was the rainy season.

“Glad to get out of the egg-beater,” Kane muttered. “I can barely feel my legs.”

Carter shushed him. He wanted to move the team away from the insertion point in case any dings had seen or heard the choppers.

They headed east by northeast, sticking to the lowlands. Jek took point, followed by the slack man, Phut Two, then Mock, McBride, Kane, and Carter, with Phut One walking sweep.

With difficulty they cut their way through the thick undergrowth with machetes that would dull much too soon. And the ‘magic’ goggles just weren’t good enough to help them keep moving rapidly through the forest depths out here in the boondocks. After a while they were all wearing the gear slung around their necks again. When they were about a couple hundred yards from insertion, Carter stopped them. They were already dragging due to the night’s heat.

“We’ll stay here ‘til morning,” he announced. “Jek, Mock, keep an eye out for watchers.” The Montagnards melted away like ghosts. The others hit the ground, grateful for the respite.

Carter threw his rucksack down and settled himself on the ground next to it. He opened the ruck, pulled out his canteen, and took a deep tug of metallic water. Finally he took off the damned goggles, tucked them and their power pack into the bag, leaned back, and closed his eyes. The machine gun lay across his legs, his finger resting on the trigger guard. He wouldn’t sleep. It wasn’t fear of the enemy that would keep him awake — it was responsibility for the team. So he listened to every sound while resting his eyes. His mind raced, not for the first time.

The sounds of night insects and tree frogs lulled Carter, calming his hardened nerves until he heard something else whispering between the endless night chirping. He bent his ear to try and capture the sound. At first he thought was that it was an enemy patrol, their gear clinking.

He listened carefully.

No, it was laughter… a child’s laughter.

He opened his eyes and turned to survey the perimeter. There, barely visible through the fronds and vines stood a slender Asian girl in a chang-ao , a traditional Chinese garment. The girl stared at Carter and held her finger up to her smiling lips. Then she beckoned him with a wave of her tiny hand.

He rose slowly from his position on the ground, checking the shapes of his sleeping teammates. No one had stirred. No one had heard the laughter. No one was awake.

He hesitated, not sure what he was doing. Or why.

He thought he might be asleep, dreaming. He pinched himself and felt it.

She was still there, half-hidden in the dense undergrowth, waving at him, beckoning him toward her.

He shrugged. Then he began to follow her.

Jesus, what am I doing?

His eyes had become remarkably well-adjusted to the dark and he followed her at an unintentional distance, unable to keep pace with the girl who was now running with one hand gathering the material of her robes. He hadn’t initially realized that he had left his machine gun behind, and when he did, he was far from the others. Too far to go back.

He was abandoning his post, but he felt compelled.

You never leave your weapon! his internal voice screamed at him.

But he had, and he couldn’t go back. He would lose the girl.

His back itched, as if someone watched from afar.

Barely in control, he pressed on through the darkness.

In time he couldn’t quite measure, Carter came to a clearing in the jungle. It was no natural clearing — the area had been burned to ash, maybe in a rogue napalm strike and Carter could still smell the characteristic petrol residue hanging in the air. It had burned the vegetation and anything else that had stood here into oblivion, leaving behind a hellish scorched landscape.

But this was too far from the war. What had happened here?