I wait until I'm sure that Cowboy has finished talking and then I say, "That sounds like a personal problem to me, Cowboy. I can't tell you what to do. If I was a human being instead of a Marine, maybe I'd know." I scratch my armpit. "You're the honcho. You're the sergeant around here and you give the orders. You make the decisions. I could never do it. I could never run a rifle squad. Never happen, bro. I just don't have the balls."
Cowboy thinks about it. Then he grins. "You're right, Joker. You shitbird. You're right. I've got to get my program squared away. I wish Gunny Gerheim was here. He'd know what to do." Cowboy thinks about it. He grins. "Shit." He walks back to the squad. "Moving..."
The squad hesitates. Crazy Earl has always been the one to say what is.
Animal Mother stands up. He sets his M-60 machine gun into his hip. He doesn't speak. He looks at the dirty faces of the squad. He moves out.
The squad collects its gear and gets to its feet.
Cowboy waves his hand and Mother takes the point.
We are discussing the best way to search the street house to house when a tank rumbles up.
Donlon says, "Hey, a tank! We can get it to--"
"No," says Cowboy. "Number ten! We don't need any help."
"That's affirmative," says Animal Mother.
I say, "A tank could flush him for us, Cowboy. Think about it. We can't budge gook grunts without supporting arms."
Cowboy shrugs. "Oh, to hell with it."
I double-time down the road to meet the tank. I run past heaps of rubble which were houses yesterday, bricks and stones and shattered wood today.
The tank jerks to a halt. The turret whirs. The big ninety-millimeter gun locks on me. For a long moment I think that the tank is going to blow me away.
The top half of the blond tank commander appears in the turret hatch. The lieutenant is wearing a flak jacket and an olive-drab football helmet with a microphone that protrudes over his lip. He is a mechanical centaur, half man, half tank.
I point out the mansions and I explain about the sniper, about how the sniper wasted our bro and all that good shit.
Cowboy comes over and tells the lieutenant to "wait one" and then to start wasting the mansions, one after another.
The blond tank commander is silent. He gives us a thumbs-up.
Cowboy sends Lance Corporal Stutten and his fire team around behind the row of mansions.
Animal Mother sets up his M-60 on a low wall and opens fire, raking the mansions at random. Every fifth round is a tracer.
The tank rolls up to the first mansion.
The rest of us double-time down an alley and cross the road a hundred yards down the street, at the end of the row of mansions.
At the opposite end of the street sits the tank. The tank fires a round of high explosives. The upper story of the first house is blown apart. The roof collapses.
Animal Mother continues to fire from his position near the tank.
Cowboy double-times to the first house at our end of the street. He steps carefully to the rear corner of the house, peeks around the corner. Cowboy waits for Lance Corporal Stutten to pop a green smoke as a signal that his fire team is in position as a blocking force.
We wait.
When green smoke begins to pour from a drainage ditch behind the first house at the far end of the street Cowboy waves his hand and we all open fire at the first house at our end of the street. One at a time, we run across the street to the first house, joining Cowboy.
Cowboy waves his hand around the corner and Lance Corporal Stutten's fire team opens up with their weapons on full automatic, pouring hundreds of high-velocity copper-jacketed bullets into the rear of the first house at their end of the street.
Animal Mother continues to chew up the fronts of all the mansions with his black steel machine gun.
The tank fires a second round. The ground floor of the first house is blown apart. The tank grinds forward twenty yards, stops, fires again. The second story of the second house explodes.
Cowboy leads us into the mansion at our end of the street. Inside, we leapfrog from corner to corner. Cowboy pops a frag and underhands it into somebody's kitchen. The detonation rocks the whole house, numbs our ears.
Rafter Man steps forward. He gestures to Cowboy, jerks his thumb at the ceiling. Cowboy holds up a circled thumb and index finger, "okay." Rafter Man pops a frag and pitches it up a stairwell to the second story. The explosion splits the plaster over our heads.
Outside, up the street, the tank fires again.
Cowboy punches me in the chest with his knuckles. Then he punches Rafter Man and Alice. He aims his right index finger at Donlon, then at the deck. Donlon nods and begins to silently point out the positions he wants the men in the squad to take.
Cowboy waves his hand and we follow him up the stairs.
Upstairs, Alice kicks out a window and we all hop out onto the roof.
The tank is two houses away. It fires.
We drop our gear and jump the six-foot chasm between houses.
On the roof of the second house Cowboy stands up and signal Lance Corporal Stutten, who waves back with his poncho. Bullets from Lance Corporal Stutten's fire team stop hitting the rest of the house we're standing on.
I double-time to the front of the house and I wave to Animal Mother. Bullets from Animal Mother's machine gun stop hitting the front of the house.
The tank fires. The shell bursts. Shrapnel whines over us.
We converge on a skylight. I drop a frag through the glass.
The grenade explodes in an invisible room below. Concussion shatters the skylight.
We drop through the ragged rectangular hole into somebody's library. Shrapnel has mangled leatherbound books. I pick up a small leatherbound book for a souvenir. The author is Jules Verne; the title is in French. I stuff the book into my thigh pocket and reach to the front of my flak jacket for another grenade.
We work our way through the house, fragging every hallway, every room. But we can't find the sniper.
The tank fires into the second story of the house next door.
I say, "No time."
Cowboy shrugs. "He wasted T.H.E. Rock."
I take a few steps down the stairs. Cowboy holds up his hand. "Listen."
Animal Mother's M-60 is ripping up the roof over our heads.
I say, "Is Mother dinky-dow? Crazy?"
Cowboy shakes his head. "No. Mother is a prick, but he's a good grunt."
We run back to the library.
We drag a heavy antique desk to the ruined skylight and Cowboy climbs up onto it and lifts himself back onto the roof.
The crack of a Simonov sniper's carbine pierces the muted rhythm of Mother's machine gun.
Cowboy falls back through the skylight. Alice, who has climbed up onto the desk, catches Cowboy and eases him down to the desktop.
I pop a frag. I climb up onto the desk and take hold of the roof with my left hand. I let the spoon fly. The spoon phinnnnings away and rattles across the floor. I hold the sweaty green oval for three seconds and, lifting myself up, I flip it up and back so that it rolls across the roof directly over us. The frag bursts, spraying seven hundred and fifty pieces of steel wire across the roof. The ceiling splits. Alice hugs Cowboy. Plaster and splintered wood bounce off my helmet.
Rafter Man jumps up onto the desk and lift himself up onto the roof.
Surprised, I pull myself up after him.
The tank fires into the ground floor of the house next door.