"I'm done for, Mack."
"No, you're not." Bolan was crouched beside him.
They talked four inches apart. Buddy scraped his head with his killing knife, shaving the hairs from the scalp, but leaving a full swath from brow to nape. The Mohawk.
Bolan wanted to stay his hand, stop the shaving, as if that would alter Buddy's fate but Bolan did not want his throat slit.
Buddy shaved and talked in a shaky voice. An orange spider emerged from behind his ear and crawled carefully down his neck.
"I smelled Leslie today. No, really. All of a sudden it just hit me. It was like she was beside me. Can you believe I gave her up to do a second tour? Man, I smelled her hair, her skin." Buddy was lost in himself, talking unevenly as he shaved. "You want to hear something even crazier? I had this memory, finally, of my mother, like I've never been able to remember her. She died when I was three. But today I remembered her giving me a bath."
"Buddy? What was in the letter you got this morning?" asked Bolan, though he already knew.
Buddy swallowed but continued shaving, as if by rote. The spider, which had crawled so carefully down his neck, rode Buddy's Adam's apple as he swallowed, but then danced in alarm as the water came trickling down from Buddy's head.
"Oh, you know. Leslie, ah..." he swallowed again "...Leslie got herself a Jody. I knew it would happen."
"Buddy, you've got to remember..."
"Only regret I have is that I won't be coming back to cut his frigging balls off," Buddy said to no one as he rinsed the short hairs from his blade. It was Buddy's trademark the knife that was super-sharp but dark. It reflected no light. Bolan could hardly see Buddy now. Their whispers hissed in the half light.
"You're doing the Mohawk because of Jody? That's not like you."
"It's not Jody, man. It's this fucking mission. I got this feeling. First we go to penetrate the village that Intelligence says is a VC camp, and it ain't. Just a bunch of goddamn villagers. Did you see those little kids with the water buffalo? If you hadn't called off the air strike they'd be dead meat. And then we hump it to the next village and there's no VC there, either. Then I got that smell and my mother, and I see myself in the water, and I get hit with this feeling. Buddy, you're a dead man. Time for the Mohawk. Buddy's going to die in the Mekong."
Bolan watched as Buddy rose on his haunches. He was sweating like a pig, staring at the jungle. Beads of sweat on his forehead and brow reflected the last touches of light. His left hand hung down to the muck, clutching the blade. Bolan saw Buddy's nostrils quivering. A Mohawk meant you weren't coming back. He wanted Buddy before he slipped away any farther.
"That's a beautiful Mohawk, Buddy."
"You think so?"
"Can I make a suggestion?"
"Sure."
"Spread some mud on your scalp. It's shining white."
Buddy reached into the muck and looked at it as though reading the entrails of his own corpse.
Slowly he raised his hands to his scalp and worked the swamp muck on either side of the stripe of chestnut hair.
When finished he looked up at Mack Bolan as if his mind were made up all the more. Keeping his hollow eyes fixed on Bolan, he lifted the cord that hung around his neck and gathered it in his hand.
"Here. I want you to have this." He reached over and put the tangle in Bolan's palm. A human ear hung from the cord, limp and leathery. "My first kill. It's yours."
"I don't want this," said Bolan. "Never have."
"Take it."
"No."
Bolan saw the look on Buddy's face and put the ear in his pocket. They moved off, with Buddy walking point.
The darkness grew wet with rain.
They crawled into position just as the moon was sinking behind the scrub.
Before them lay the enemy camp, a hillock among the mangroves that was honeycombed with tunnels and caves. It looked to be a full fifty yards across the top.
This jungle would hide an army forever. The delta was fingered with ridges that rose from the primeval swamp, covered in scrub oak and nettles in an endless, unbroken cover of vegetation. The VC gathered and struck their targets when and where they chose, always melting away into the delta.
There was no way of destroying them without destroying the delta itself.
The young Sergeant Bolan had picked up a Washington newspaper with the Pentagon's account of areas controlled by American and RV forces. He found it a cruel joke. The allies never held any position more than temporarily, and then only as long as their firepower blasted anything that moved. The VC owned the night, anywhere and anytime they wanted to collect.
Buddy and Bolan watched the occasional movements of VC in the camp, trying to make out where the tunnels began and ended.
There were too many entrances to count.
"I think we hit the jackpot," Buddy said.
"I stopped counting at ten."
"This is a hard-core regiment. These guys aren't farming by day."
"Probably sitting on enough ammo and supplies for the whole quadrant," muttered Bolan. "We can't do this alone. We'll do a sapper job on the place, then call in the choppers once the action starts."
"You do the perimeter, Mack. I'm going in to see if I can blow the ammo. Meet by that trail in an hour and a half."
Bolan was about to say, "No, I'll go in," but Buddy had already slipped into the swamp that lay at the foot of the ridge.
Bolan gave him five minutes and then snaked in himself. He felt the cool touch of the water as it slipped through his fatigues and surrounded his body. With only his eyes above the waterline, Bolan crawled toward the camp. The moon had set.
Bolan eased every thought from his mind. He was empty. He let everything of himself slip away.
He reduced himself to a presence. The water passed through him. He became pure killer.
Where the ridge rose from the swamp, Bolan slowed to almost imperceptible movement. In his mind he was Buddy's blade a death that reflected no light.
He rose from the water so slowly he could feel the evaporation from his neck. Every nerve was vacant yet highly aware.
Ten feet away two guards sat in a shallow hole, looking at him.
Bolan's crawl toward them was agonizingly slow. They looked directly at him but could not see his form in the dark swamp. Bolan saw the outline of rifles in their laps.
Bolan lowered each hand carefully as he crawled, testing the surface before he let his weight press on it. He covered four feet in ten minutes.
An eternity passed. One of the guards moved his head, sending an alarm along the swamp crawler's spine. Bolan's hand came down slowly on something plastic. A claymore.
Bolan could smell the guards. He was five feet from their hole. He began to turn the claymore around, five degrees at a time, so that it faced the guards.
One guard turned to the other and spoke in a whisper. The second guard sat up listening, the claymore wires in his hands.
Bolan stopped breathing when he saw the wires.
His lungs began to burn. His heart pounded audibly in his ears.
Three feet away the guard's knees shifted in the blackness.
Nothing more was said. The two guards listened intently.
Bolan finished rotating the claymore and moved off into the blackness.
Then he turned two more.
Time was running out. Bolan finished the perimeter after an agonizing hour and then crawled into the camp to meet Buddy.
Bolan felt Buddy's breath before he heard him. The voice came in his ear, barely perceptible.
"I found the commander. He's copying something down on his map as the radioman gets it. They're giving out the locations of the VC regiments."
"Did you hear any of it?"
"Hear it? I'm going for the map, Mack."
"You've got a pair of brass balls, my friend."
"I always knew I'd die in this shit hole." Buddy slid off before Bolan could say anything more. Bolan's guts went cold.
Bolan crouched by the trail, knife in hand. He felt a centipede scamper up his leg, but remained motionless. It was not worth risking exposure to kill it. He could feel it work its way into his crotch.