Chickenshit

There were four of them; Hal, Scott, Benny, and Lucas
and they were in deep shit, behind enemy lines without a
radio. The jungle was untouched, too fresh. Whoever moved
through here had all the time in the world to carefully
replace leaves and gently push branches to one side. They
knew there should have been a village one mile east, which
meant one of two things was happening; either (they were
between the village and the river) the villagers didn’t use
water, or the village was used as a base for Cong operatives
so that every approach to the settlement was watched and
most likely booby trapped.

‘How the fuck did we get left in this dump?’

‘You tell me Benny,’ Hal answered quietly. ‘Weren’t you
guarding the fucking radio?’

‘Man, don’t get on my back, Hally. You saw me leave
the goddam set to try and get Paul a medi-pack, I gave him a
shot, he smiled and died, and that’s when the whole fucking
fox hole was shelled out of the ground. Jesus, I don’t have to
justify my shit to you, you don’t hold rank on me.’

‘But I do, and you two had better shut the fuck up before
we all earn the snipers another medal. We all saw the radio
get hit and without another one we’ll probably all end up
hanging from trees on guitar string so we can quit blaming
each other and find out if we are where we ought to be on
this map. Lucas I want you to trace this bank down to the
river, if you find water check its flow and look for boats or
anything else like that tucked away, if we’re where we think
we are this really is the closest the river gets to the village,
and we’ll need to cross it and find out if the village has a
radio set we can borrow.’ Scott grinned. ‘Benny stay here,
Hal and I are going up to see if there’s any movement over
this rise. I want everybody back in fifteen minutes and two
rounds one second apart if anyone’s compromised o.k.?’

Lucas crept through the undergrowth, stopping every two
yards to listen to the jungle, without breathing, listening for
voices, steps, water. The river was close, he saw it four
minutes after leaving Benny and he’d only had to head due
east to get there. Too easy, he thought. He’d seen none of the
usual booby trap give-aways like roughed-up bark and neat
little openings in otherwise dense forest. It was still thick but
now he lay down to crawl more slowly, every inch of his
body pricked by thorns or nibbled and itched by mosquitoes
and giant ants that he habitually ignored, more concerned
with not losing an eye to the sharp little sticks that he
couldn’t focus on with the sweat running down his face.

After a whole minute at the edge of the water, Lucas risked
kneeling long enough to establish that there weren’t any
obvious signs of boats or even of people, and that yes, they
probably could cross there. It was narrow with enough
vegetation on both banks to set up a rope and then give each
other cover.

At dusk they were only a hundred yards outside the
village. From their rise they looked down onto the main
cluster of houses and realised now, why the river where they
had crossed it was not busy. A crude canal brought water to
the edge of the fields from where it was then run along
wooden troughs into the village itself. A bamboo water
wheel provided the necessary push. Their vantage point was
trees on the edge of the jungle proper and no one worked the
fields nearest them. Prolonged surveillance through
binoculars had shown no sign of any armed factions. By now
they were all keen to get on with it.

‘We go as soon as it’s dark,’ Scott smiled. ‘We don’t
know what to expect going in, but it probably won’t be
armed resistance. If it is, we’re probably better armed than
they are and whatever happens I don’t want any shooting
that isn’t return fire, the last thing we want is confusion of
any kind. We go in formation, me and Lucas entering each
building in turn starting with the biggest in the middle there,
then the two to the right and finally the two to the left which
look the least inhabited, you two cover our backs at every
door. The one thing we can expect, regardless of whether we
find a radio or not, is company on the way out. Again, we
stick together, if there is a radio, Benny you of course carry
it. If Benny gets hit, Lucas you take it. That way Hal can
look after the heavy toys and we should move like a fucking
tank until we get to cover again over on the west side where
those four trees stand taller. Right, do we all know what
we’re doing?’

BUY YOUR COPY HERE