David Drake - Balefires

Crozier gulped the swig of beer still in his mouth. "Indeed not," he agreed. "Not here, especially. The area has a very bad reputation."

"That a fact?"Herrold asked in mild surprise. "At the troop meetin' last night the ole man said around here it'd be pretty quiet. Not much activity on the intelligence maps."

"Activity?"the Frenchman repeated with raised eyebrows."Who can say? The VC come through the laborers' hootches now and again, not so much here as near A-Shau, that is true. But whenI first was transferred here three years ago, there were five, maybe six hundred in the village-the Mengs, you know, not the plantation lines."

"That little place back where we left the hardball?" Ginelli wondered aloud. "Jeez, there's not a dozen hootches there."

"Quite so," Crozier agreed with a grave nod of his head. "Because a battalion of Communists surrounded it one night and killed every Meng they found. Maybe twenty survived."

"Christ," Ginelli breathed in horror, but Herrold's greater experience caused his eyes to narrow in curiosity.

"Why the hell?" the tall track commander asked. "I mean, I know they've got hit squads out to gun down village cops and headmen and all. But why the whole place? Were they that strong for the government?"

"The government?" the civilian echoed; he laughed."They spat at the District Governor when he came through. But a week before the Communists came, there was firing near this very place. Communist, there is no doubt. I saw the tracers myself and they were green.

"The rest-and this is rumor only, what my foremen told me at the time before they stopped talking about it-a company, thirty men, were ambushed. Wiped out, every one of them and mutilated, ah… badly. How they decided that the Mengs were responsible, I do not know; but that could have been the reason they wiped out the village later."

"Umm," Herrold grunted. He crumpled his beer can and looked for a litter barrel."Lemme get on the horn and we'll see just how the co-ax is screwing up." The can clattered into the barrel as the TC swung up on the back deck of the zippo again. The others could hear his voice as he spoke into the microphone: "Battle five-six, track seven-zero. Request clearance to test fire our Mike seven-four."

An unintelligible crackle replied from the headset a moment later. "No sir," Herrold denied, "not if we want it working tonight." He nodded at the answer. "Roger, roger." He waved. "OK," he said to his crew as he set down the radio helmet, "let's see what it's doin'."

Ginelli climbed up beside Herrold, slithering his pudgy body over the edge of the track with difficulty. Murray continued to lounge against the side of the track. "Hell," he said, "I never much liked guns anyway; you guys do your thing."Crozier stood beside his friend, interested but holding back a little from the delicacy of an uninvited guest. The machine gun had once been co-axial to the flamethrower. Now it was on a swivel welded to the top of the TC's dome. Herrold rotated it, aiming at the huge tree in the center of the grove. A ten foot scar streaked the light trunk vertically to the ground, so he set the buckhorn sight just above it. Other troopers, warned by radio what to expect, were watching curiously.

The gun stuttered off a short burst and jammed. Empty brass tinkled off the right side of the track. Herrold swore and clicked open the receiver cover. His screwdriver pried at the stuck case until it sprang free. Slamming the cover shut, he jacked another round into the chamber.

"Goddamn it," Herrold said. "Looks like we gotta take the whole thing down."

"Or throw rocks," Ginelli suggested.

Herrold cocked a rusty eyebrow. Unlike the thick-set newbie, he had been in country long enough to have a feel for real danger. After a moment he grinned back. "Oh, we don't have to throw rocks," he said. He unslung his old submachine gun from the side of the dome. Twenty years of service had worn most of the finish off its crudely stamped metal but it still looked squat and deadly.

Herrold set the wire stock to his shoulder; the burst, when he squeezed off, was ear-shattering. A line of fiercely red tracers stabbed from the muzzle and ripped an ascending curve of splintered wood up the side of the center tree.

"Naw, we're OK while the ole greasegun works," Herrold said. He laughed. "But," he added, "we better tear down the co-ax anyhow."

"Perhaps I should leave now," Crozier suggested. "It grows late and I must return to my duties."

"Hell," Murray protested, "stick around for chow at least. Your dinks'll do without babysittin' for that long."

The Frenchman pursed his lips."He'll have to clear with the colonel," Herrold warned.

"No sweat," the driver insisted."We'll snow him about all the local intelligence Jacques can give us. Come on, man; we'll brace him now." Crozier followed in Murray's forceful wake, an apprehensive frown still on his face.

"Say, where'd you get these?" Ginelli inquired, picking up a fat, red-nosed cartridge like those Herrold had just thumbed into his greasegun.

"The tracers?" the TC replied absently. "Oh, I found a case back in Di An. Pretty at night and, what the hell, they hit just as hard. But let's get crackin' on the co-ax."

Ginelli jumped to the ground. Herrold handed him a footlocker to serve as a table-the back deck of the zippo was too cluttered to strip the gun there-and the co-ax itself. In a few minutes they had reduced the weapon to components and begun cleaning them.

A shadow eased across the footlocker. Ginelli looked up, still holding the receiver he was brushing with a solvent-laden toothbrush. The interpreter, Hieu, had walked over from the TOC and was facing the grove. He seemed oblivious to the troopers beside him.

"Hey Hieu," the TC called."Why the hell'd the colonel stick us here, d'ya know? We get in a firefight and these damn trees'll hide a division of VC."

Hieu looked around slowly. His features had neither the fragility of the pure Vietnamese nor the moon-like fullness of those with Chinese blood. His was a blocky face, set as ever in hard lines, mahogany in color. Hieu stepped up to the wall before answering, letting his hands run over the rough stone like two dried oak leaves.

"No time to make berm," he said at last, pointing to the bellowing Caterpillar climbing out of a trench near the TOC. The D-7A was digging in sleeping trailers for the brass rather than starting to throw up an earthen wall around the perimeter. "The wall here make us need ti-ti berm, I show colonel."

Herrold nodded. The stone enclosure was square, about a hundred yards to a side. Though only four feet high, the ancient wall was nearly as thick and would stop anything short of an eight inch shell. But even with the work the wall would save the engineers on the west side, those trees sure played hell with the zones of fire. Seven of them looked to Herrold to be Philippine mahoganies; God knew what the monster in the middle was; a banyan, maybe, from the creviced trunk, but the bark didn't look like the banyans he'd seen before.

"Never saw trees that big before," the TC said aloud.

Hieu looked at him again, this time with a hint of expression on his face."Yes," he stated. "Ti-ti left when French come, now only one." His fingers toyed with the faded duck of the ammo pouch clipped to his belt. Both soldiers thought the dark man was through speaking, but Hieu's tongue flicked between his thin lips again and he continued, "Maybe three, maybe two years only, there was other. Now only this."The interpreter's voice became a hiss."But beaucoup years before, everywhere was tree, everywhere was Meng!"

Boots scuffled in powdery dirt; Murray and the

Frenchman were coming back from the TOC. Hieu lost interest in Herrold and vaulted the laterite wall gracefully. The driver and Crozier watched him stepping purposefully toward the center of the widely spaced grove as they halted beside the others.