Restless Soul - Alex Archer [108]
Wallem and Moore were the first soldiers out the door, raising their rifles and firing as they went. Sanduski hung back. He’d gotten a look at the Vietnamese force out there.
At least two dozen…and that was his guess without counting or getting a real good look. And that meant there were more. There were always ones that you couldn’t see. This was his second tour, and he intended to get out of it alive.
As the rest of the men raced out, all of them firing and hollering, some of them screaming as bullets slammed into them, Sanduski edged deeper into the building. There was a large Buddha at the back, decorated in gold and silver and just big enough to squat behind. He hid just as the firing stopped.
He held his breath when he heard footsteps. They were faint against the sound of the rain. Men talked, in a language Sanduski didn’t understand. Slope heads. And that meant Thomsen, Moore, Wallem and all of the others were dead.
The Vietcong talked among themselves, pacing and moving things around, and finally leaving.
Sanduski let out a breath carefully. His legs cramped from the position, but he didn’t dare move. He didn’t move for what he guessed was a few hours.
When it had gotten so dark that he couldn’t see anything, he stood, rubbing at his numb legs to get the feeling back and stumbling forward and into one statue after another. He could hardly walk; his legs weren’t cooperating.
At last he found the opening and cautiously looked out. It had stopped raining, and there were just enough stars overhead so that he could see the bodies of his fellows. Not a single VC corpse—they’d either taken their fallen or Thomsen and the others hadn’t scored a single hit.
Sanduski went from one body to the next, discovering that the VC had taken the treasure; however, they missed a diamond ring that Thomsen had taken. The gem was the size of a big sunflower seed. Sanduski plucked it loose and then went to collect the dog tags.
But there weren’t any.
“Damn slope heads took ’em,” he said to no one.
He hadn’t seen Lanh Vuong carefully pluck each tag loose and put a bullet in the head of each soldier…just to be sure they were dead.
He hadn’t seen the colonel collect blood from each man and say a twisted prayer to Papa Ghede.
Sanduski returned to the building, where he hid until dawn. Then he picked up enough small pieces of treasure to fill his pockets and pack and headed down the trail to the east.
“‘War is always the same,’” he said. “‘It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise.’ I promise it won’t get me.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7974-6
RESTLESS SOUL
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jean Rabe for her contribution to this work.
Copyright © 2011 by Worldwide Library
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue