The guys on the stream bank were still firing blindly, and through the fire I could hear them yelling at me, “Come on, Lieutenant! Get out of there! We got to get the hell out of here! Come on, come on!”
I looked one more time at the woman standing on the high bend in the stream, and she seemed very nonchalant. Maybe she was disappointed that we weren’t much of a challenge to her.
I stared at her. She held up her hand with four fingers extended, then clenched her fist and pointed at me. My blood ran cold. She turned and disappeared into the brush behind her.
I jumped to my feet and ran through the stream and up the muddy bank, pulled along by outstretched hands into the brush.
I gasped, “Sniper! I saw her! Upstream. Let’s go!” I began running on a path parallel to the winding stream toward where I’d last seen her.
Dawson ran up behind me and jerked me back by my rucksack. He said in a loud whisper, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I saw her! It’s a woman! She’s upstream. About a hundred meters.”
The other four guys caught up to us, and I explained quickly what I’d seen. I must have sounded a little nuts or something because they kept shooting glances at each other. Finally, they got it.
As I said, they’re pros, and a pro’s instinct for survival doesn’t mean running away; it means running toward what’s trying to kill you so you can kill it first.
In any case, we needed to run because we’d given away our positions with all that firing, and we were deep in enemy territory, so when you fire, you’ve got to get the hell away fast.
No one likes leaving dead guys behind, but this wasn’t regular combat stuff where you recover dead and wounded at all costs; this was long-range recon and getting left behind is definitely a possibility.
We ran about a hundred meters along the path, and Andolotti called out, “We could be running right into an ambush.”
Dawson replied through heavy breaths, “I’d rather do that than get picked off later. Move it!”
We came to the bend in the stream, and I ran out to the edge of the bank where I saw a brass cartridge sparkling in the sunlight. I picked it up and saw it was a 7.62 millimeter, most probably from a Draganov. I didn’t need evidence, but somehow finding the cartridge made me more certain that I hadn’t been hallucinating. I put the cartridge in my pocket.
We moved quickly back to the path, where we saw a few footprints in the damp soil. Reluctantly, but with the knowledge that it was her or us, we pressed on.
We moved at a half trot for about an hour, but by then, we knew we weren’t going to find her. She would find us.
We’d been moving away from Rendezvous Alpha, which we could make in the three days left before our dawn rendezvous time, if nothing went wrong.
You never go back on the trail you took in, so we headed into the woods and chopped our way through brush until we intersected a trail that headed in the general direction we needed to go.
We moved as quickly as we could, but the heat and fatigue, and fifty pounds of gear, was slowing us down.
We took a few minutes’ break every hour and pushed on until dusk, not saying much, but I’m sure everyone, myself included, was thinking about why the lady hadn’t blown me out of the water. I had a few answers to that, and it had less to do with a sudden feeling of compassion on her part and more to do with fucking with our heads.
The sun had sunk into Laos, and the enemy moves at night. We heard trucks and tanks rumbling somewhere to our right, then heard men chatting and laughing not far away. If I’d had a radio, I would have called in artillery on them. Actually, if I’d had a radio, I would have called in choppers to get us the hell out of there right after Muller and Landon got hit. But the lady had left us mute and deaf to the outside world.
We moved more quickly away from the enemy troop movements and about an hour later, we found a small hill covered with tall elephant grass where we set up a defensive perimeter, for what it was worth. We were six lightly armed guys, surrounded by massive numbers of enemy troops. Plus, one sniper, who knew we were there, but who wanted to keep us for herself.
We ate some dehydrated rations reconstituted in their pouches with tepid canteen water. No one said much.
About midnight, we took turns sleeping and keeping watch; two up, four down. But no one slept much. Near dawn, I was on guard duty with Sergeant Dawson, an old guy at thirty, who was on his second tour, and probably his last.
He said to me in a quiet voice, “You sure it was a woman?”
I nodded and grunted.
“You sure? You saw tits and stuff?”
I almost laughed. I replied, “I saw her in my field glasses. It was a woman.” I added, “They make good snipers.”
He nodded. “Had one in Quang Tri once. Killed four guys before we blew the shit out of her with rockets.” He added, “We found her head.”
I didn’t reply.
He asked the obvious. “Why didn’t she nail you?”
“Don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s like … maybe there’s a two-guy-a-day limit on her hunting permit.”
“Not funny.”
“No. Not funny.” He asked, “You think we gave her the slip?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
And that was the end of the conversation.
We moved out at first light and headed south toward Rendezvous Alpha.
About noon, we got to believing that we might make it. There were no more big streams to cross, just a few little brooks that were choked with good covering brush, and there were no open areas on the map that we couldn’t avoid. But then we noticed that the trees and the brush started to look a little sick, and within half an hour, we realized we were in an Agent Orange defoliated area that wasn’t marked on the map.
Pretty soon we were moving through a dead zone of bare trees and brown, withered brush that offered no concealment. Dawson said, “Lieutenant, we got to go back and around this defoliation.”
I replied, “We don’t know how big the area is. It might be a full day detour, then we’re not going to get to Alpha.”
He nodded and looked around. He said, “At least Charlie ain’t around here. They don’t like the defoliated areas.”
“Neither do I.”
We took a break, spread out, and got down, as per standard operating procedure when a patrol is stopped.
Smitty pulled a jungle bar out of his packet and bit off a piece of the chalky, so-called chocolate. He said, “That bitch.” Meaning the sniper, of course. “That bitch could have wasted us all back there in that napalm area. She could’ve wasted at least you, Lieutenant, back at the stream, and maybe a few more of us. What’s her fucking game?”
I didn’t reply, and neither did anyone else.
I was getting a bad feeling about this place, so I stood, put on my rucksack, and said, “Saddle up and move out.”
Everyone stood, and Andolotti unzipped his fly and said, “Hold up. Gotta take a quick piss.”
About midstream, he pitched backward and landed with a thump on his back, still holding his thing, which was still streaming yellow piss.
We all hit the ground and lay frozen on the dead, chemical-smelling earth.
I called out, “Andolotti!”
No reply. I turned my head and eyes toward him. His chest was heaving, and I saw blood around his mouth. He gave a final heave and lay still.
From the way he’d been thrown backward, I knew he’d been hit square in the chest, so I knew where the shot had come from. Through the dead vegetation, I could see a slight rise in the land about a hundred meters due west. I called out, “Follow my tracers!” I took aim from my prone position and fired a long burst toward the rise. Every sixth round was a red, streaking tracer that looked like a laser beam pointing toward the suspected target.