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By Root 916 0

up at the intersection of two dikes, on the berms themselves because the paddies were filled with water and leeches. Spurgeon, a green headband pushing his black hair from his eyes, snapped a thirty-round starter belt into his machine gun, laid the rest of the ammunition on the dike, and stretched out on his poncho liner. Harris and DeFrank placed tripflares and one claymore out as far as the cord would allow–without cover, though, the backblast could be a problem–running the det cord of the mine back to the M60's bipod so it wouldn't be lost in the dark. Peske, who never wore a helmet or a bush hat, divided up the watch time. This was a new area and they were all uptight, but they were short of men. Everyone was fatigued from a day of pushing bush, so they could afford to have only one man on guard at a time.

That was not good.

Two hours after midnight, Peske came awake with a start. Something was wrong. He looked against the skyline, the dark blue of the sky meeting the dark black of the expanse of paddies, and saw the black silhouettes standing in front of the M60 beside which Spurgeon slept.

No one's supposed to be standing!

Pith helmets came into focus, and Peske instantly knew that NVA scouts leading an NVA night march had somehow walked through their tripflares, only to come to a startled halt when they saw the men lying in a row on the dike. Without moving, Peske shifted his eyes to his RTO, who was on guard at the time, trying to figure out how the NVA had gotten so close, and saw the radioman slowly coming to his knees. The RTO, a new kid, was not holding his M16; he had used it to prop up his radio and was too stunned now to reach for it. In an agony of suspense, the three seconds it took to come awake and realize what was happening seeming like three hours, Peske saw the NVA slowly start to walk backward. If we don't fire, they'll just go away, Peske thought, but he knew that whoever shot first usually won, and he found his M16 in the dark.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

Peske squeezed back on the trigger, and the shadows suddenly broke into a run. It sounded like they were throwing off equipment in the paddy water.

“Harry, fire your sixty, fire your sixty!”

Spurgeon came out of a deep sleep when the blast of the M16 floated into his brain, vaguely hearing the frantic shouts, “Harry, blow the claymore!”

Shit, these guys are shooting at shadows.

Everyone else was sliding back off the dike into the water, but Spurgeon lay where he was. Harris was knee deep in the paddy behind the berm, firing single shots from his Ml6. With only the happy thought that he wouldn't have to carry all this ammo back come morning, Spurgeon swung his M60 to where Harris was shooting and pulled the trigger. Just then one of the running NVA snagged their tripflare, turning the wet paddies before them into a shimmering twilight zone. Someone's really out there! Spurgeon fired off the starter belt in seconds, then snatched up his three-hundred-round belt. He snapped back the bolt, laid the belt in, and slapped the feed tray down, but either the weapon or the ammunition was too dirty: The M60 jammed after one shot. In an absolute rage that he might miss the only action they'd seen in weeks, Spurgeon was instantly on his knees–the only man still on the dike– tugging at the bolt and slicing his fingers as he tore off bullets and links. He could still fire only one shot at a time. He frantically reached for the claymore firing handle, covered his ears, and then felt his eyebrows singe at the backblast.

He tried his M60 one more time, then in a fit of anger threw the detached barrel one way, the body of the weapon the other.

A sniper sat behind the dike with a nightscope mounted on his rifle. Spurgeon watched the barrel come to rest on a particular spot; then the sniper casually squeezed off one shot, and said, “Got 'em.”

“You got 'em?” Spurgeon sounded skeptical.

“That's what I said.”

Lieutenant Peske was shouting, “Cease fire!”

Peske hugged the dike as he spoke into his radio handset, having finally realigned the radio frequency dials