The scent of floor wax and cafeteria food disappeared, instantly replaced by the smell of wet jungle vegetation, red soil, smoke, and pure, metallic fear. The white walls dissolved into the green darkness of the A Shau Valley.
Harlon was no longer in North Carolina. He was twenty-four years old again. His hands were not swollen with arthritis; they were locked in a death grip around his rifle. The red flannel was gone, replaced by jungle fatigues soaked from three days of relentless movement and monsoon rain.
“Gunny, they are inside the perimeter!” a voice cracked with terror.
Harlon looked down. Private Thomas Sterling, a nineteen-year-old farm boy from Nebraska, crouched beside him in the mud of a massive shell crater. Sterling was pressing both hands against a catastrophic abdominal wound, clutching a field radio handset near his ear.
“Keep pressure on it, Sterling,” Harlon ordered, his voice fighting to be heard over the deafening roar of automatic gunfire shredding the canopy above them. “Do not look at the wound. Look at me.”
Their six-man reconnaissance team had been sent deep into the valley on a flawed intelligence report. Instead of a light supply route, they had dropped directly into a massive enemy staging area. Six Marines against hundreds. For three days, they had been hunted, pushed farther up the steep slopes near Hill 937. Now, the circle had closed. There was nowhere left to run.
A mortar round slammed into the earth nearby, lifting the ground beneath them and showering the crater with splintered bamboo and red clay. Harlon shook the dirt from his eyes and checked his rifle. Empty. He slammed home his final magazine.
“Gunny, air command says they cannot see us!” Sterling shouted through his tears, pressing the handset tighter. “The cloud ceiling is too low. The rain is hiding everything. They cannot make the strike without a visual reference!”
Harlon looked up. The sky was a solid, impenetrable ceiling of gray monsoon clouds. Somewhere above that ceiling, phantom fighter jets circled, loaded with enough destructive force to save them. But they were completely blind.
“Tell them to strike the coordinates!” Harlon roared, firing a controlled burst at shifting shadows in the treeline. The enemy was closing in for the final push.
“They will not do it!” Sterling sobbed. “The strike is danger close! If they release blind, they’ll kill everyone here!”
Harlon looked at his broken team. Jenkins lay motionless near a rotting log. Another Marine—ironically named Miller—was staring blankly at the sky, fading fast from a chest wound. Only Harlon and Sterling were left fighting. The rhythmic, confident gunfire from the jungle below told Harlon the enemy knew they were out of ammo. They were moving in for the slaughter.
Harlon’s voice dropped into an eerie, dead calm. “Give me the handset, Sterling.”
“Gunny…”
“I said give me the radio.”