Rafter Man and I crawl on our bellies on the roof.
Behind us, Alice lifts Cowboy over his head like a wrestler, deposits him gently upon the roof. Then Alice climbs up. He picks Cowboy up in his arms as though Cowboy were an oversized baby.
Doc Jay calls to us from the roof of the first house.
Alice pulls a tent rope from a thigh pocket and ties it under Cowboy's arms. He flips the other end of the rope to Doc Jay. Doc Jay gets a good grip on the rope and braces himself as Alice lowers Cowboy into the chasm between the houses. Doc Jay pulls in the slack as Cowboy falls. Cowboy's limp body swings over and thuds into the wall beneath Doc Jay's feet. Doc Jay grits his teeth, pulls Cowboy up. Alice looks back at me, but I wave him on. He leaps over to the first house.
Doc Jay gathers up all of our gear and Alice throws Cowboy over his shoulder and they start back down.
Rafter Man has crawled up to the crest of the roof. He peeks over the crest.
Bang. A hiss.
I crawl up beside Rafter Man. I take a peek. From behind a low chimney at the opposite corner of the roof a thin black line protrudes.
We hear the incredibly loud clanking of the tank as it rolls on the street below. It stops.
Animal Mother and Lance Corporal Stutten stop firing.
"Let's go," I say. I grab Rafter Man's shoulder. "The tank can waste the gook."
Rafter Man doesn't look at me. He pulls away.
I turn away and I duck walk to the edge of the roof. I stand up and am about to jump across when the house explodes beneath me.
I fall on my back.
The sniper is moving.
Rafter Man jumps over the crest of the roof and slides down the incline on his ass.
I try to stand up. But all of my bones have shifted one inch to the left.
Suddenly a foot steps on my chest, pinning me. The sniper looks down, surprised. The sniper sees that I'm helpless, glances back at Rafter Man, gets ready to jump across to the other roof.
Rafter Man runs back up the incline and slides back down on his ass, ten yards away.
I reach for my grease gun.
The sniper turns toward Rafter Man and raises her SKS carbine.
The sniper is the first Victor Charlie I've seen who was not dead, captured, or far, far away. She is a child, no more than fifteen years old, a slender Eurasian angel with dark, beautiful eyes, which, at the same time, are the hard eyes of a grunt. She's not quite five feet tall. Her hair is long and black and shiny, held together by rawhide cord tied in a bow. Her shirt and shorts are mustard-colored khaki and look new. Slung diagonally across her chest, separating her small breasts, is a white cloth tube fat with sticky reddish rice. Her B.F. Goodrich sandals have been cut from discarded tires. Around her tiny waist hangs a web belt from which dangle homemade hand grenades with hollow wooden handles, made by stuffing black powder into Coca-Cola cans, a knife for cleaning fish, and six canvas pouches containing banana clips for the AK-47 assault rifle slung on her back.
Bang. Rafter Man is firing his M-16. Bang. Bang.
The sniper lowers her weapon. She looks at Rafter Man. She looks at me. She tries to raise her weapon.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bullets shock flesh. Rafter Man is firing. Rafter Man's bullets are punching the life out of the sniper.
The sniper falls off the roof.
The tank fires into the ground floor beneath us. The house shakes.
I stand up. I feel like a dead man's shit. I walk to the front of the house. I wave to the blond tank commander. He swings a fifty-caliber machine gun around and aims it at me. I step into full view on the edge of the roof. I wave an "all clear."
The tank commander gives me a thumbs-up.
I pop a green smoke grenade and I drop it on the roof.
I limp over to the skylight and I climb back down into the library.
Rafter Man has already jumped into the library and is running down the shrapnel-scarred stairs.
Down on the street I watch as the tank rolls up to the last house still standing. I wave another "all clear" and the tank commander gives me another smile and another thumbs-up and then the tank fires, blasting the top floor. If fires again, blasting the ground floor.
The tank commander's great mechanical body grumbles contentedly and rumbles away.
Cowboy double-times to meet me. He punches me on the arm. "Look!" Cowboy touches his right ear, carefully. "Look!" There's a neat little round hole through his right ear and a semicircular nick on the top of his left ear. "See? A cheap Heart! The round went through the helmet from behind, spun all the way around my head, then came out and hit me in the arm..." Cowboy holds up his right forearm, which has already been bandaged. "Did you see that tank? Was that tank bad? What a honey."
Doc Jay catches up to Cowboy, grabs him roughly, pushes him down. Cowboy sits on a splintered tree stump while Doc Jay tears the waxy brown wrapper off a compress bandage and ties the bandage around Cowboy's bloody head.
Alice and I walk around to the rear of the house.
We find Rafter Man standing over the sniper, drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola. Rafter Man grins. He says, "Things go better with Coke."
Animal Mother walks up and Rafter Man says, "Look at her! Look at her!"
We all stand over the sniper. The sniper is drawing her breath with great effort. Guts that look like colorful plastic have squirted out through bullet holes. The back of the sniper's right leg and her right buttock have been torn off. She grits her teeth and then makes a sound like a dog that has been run over.
Lance Corporal Stutten leads his fire team to the sniper. "Look at that," says Lance Corporal Stutten. "It's a girl. She's all busted up."
"Look at her!" Rafter Man is saying. He struts around the moaning lump of torn meat. "Look at her! Am I bad? Am I a menace? Am I a life taker? Am I a heart breaker?"
Alice kneels and unbuckles the sniper's web belt and jerks it from under her body. The sniper whimpers. She speaks to us in French. Alice tosses the bloody belt to Rafter Man.
The sniper begins to pray in Vietnamese.
Rafter Man asks, "What's she saying?"
I shrug. "What difference does it make?"
Animal Mother spits. "It's gonna get dark. We better hump back to the company area."
I say, "What about the gook?"
"Fuck her," says Animal Mother. "Let her rot."
"We can't just leave her here," I say.
Animal Mother takes a giant step toward me, puts his face up close to mine. "Hey, asshole, Cowboy is down. You're fresh out of friends, motherfucker. I'm running this squad. I was a platoon sergeant before they busted me. I say we leave the gook for the mother-loving rats."
Rafter Man is buckling on his NVA belt. The belt has a dull-silver buckle with a star engraved in the center. "Joker is a sergeant."
Animal Mother is surprised. He stares at Rafter Man, then at me. Then: "That don't cut no shit out here. This is the field, motherfucker. You ain't a grunt. You don't pack the gear to be a grunt. You want to fuck with me? Huh? You want to throw some hands?"
I say, "I wouldn't run this squad for a million dollars. I'm just saying that we can't leave the gook like this."
"I don't care," says Animal Mother. "Go on and waste her."
I say, "No. Not me."
"Then we saddle up and move...now."
I look at the sniper. She whimpers. I try to decide what I would want if I were down, half dead, hurting bad, surrounded by my enemies. I look into her eyes, trying to find the answer. She sees me. She recognizes me--I am the one who will end her life. We share a bloody intimacy. As I lift my grease gun she is praying in French. I jerk the trigger. Bang. One round enters the sniper's left eye and as the bullet exits it tears off the back of her head.