Chapter EighteenSometimes when he thinks back it seems like a movie.
A horror movie, with himself as one of the actors.
It happens in the jungle. It's hot, wet, the smells of both growth and decay heavy in the air. The morning light after a long, muddy night is a weak gray-green.
A North Vietnamese soldier appears from nowhere in the bad light and his involuntary cry of surprise breaks the humid silence. There is a sound like an enormous bumblebee and the NVA stumbles stiffly backwards, his tunic shredded by a burst from the silenced M-l0. As he drops out of sight in the foliage his finger triggers a single wild shot from his AK that hits Spaulding in the leg, shattering his fibula.
Captain Vollmer: "God dammit! Let's fuckin' didi mau!"
Neal Tate and Dan Akoki run toward Spaulding, wh
