“Goddamn it,” Jenkins cursed the VC soldiers and himself. He raised his rifle and placed a crosshair on a VC trooper who was reloading.

BLAM! The trooper jerked as a jet of blood spat out of the small of his back.

BLAM! The other trooper turned around in time to catch a bullet in the chest, splattering his lung material over the sandbags. He crumpled to the ground, still writhing and hacking in agony. Rico, watching all this, didn’t let a moment go to waste. He sprinted mindlessly into the street, towards the machinegun nest. Jenkins spotted movement from the opposite side of the street. VC! He screamed out a warning,

“RICO, INCOMING!”

The VC heard the cry, and spotted Rico. They opened up with their rifles – and Rico ran into a wall of bullets. They wedged into him, spurting blood and organs out of his back, and he fell like a holed up rag-doll. Jenkins and Timmons backed up around the building’s corner.

“Shit! Look at the way those savages cut him up. Goddamn fucking savages! FUCKING SAVAGES!” Timmons cried in hysteria. He pushed Jenkins aside and stuck his rifle around the corner, firing sporadically. “DIE you SONS OF A BITCHES!” The empty cases clinked to the ground, until his rifle ran dry. He took a peek around the corner as bullets flew into the building, chipping wood and cement away. Timmon backed up against the building again, “Shit! Four VC.” The bullets stopped.

Jenkins said calmly, “I’ll take the fuckers down.” He crawled to the corner and edged his way around. With his rifle, he could spot a VC soldier crouched low against the sandbags. The stupid shit. He fired a round, and it exploded into the soldier’s cranium. Another VC soldier popped up just then, yelling something in Vietnamese at his comrades. Jenkins took another shot that landed dead in the man’s heart. Without warning, Jenkin’s rifle jerked as several bullets richocheted around him. Jenkins rolled back behind the wall again. He glanced at his rifle. It had been shot in the barrel, and it was bent out of shape. Goddamn it. He threw his rifle back to the ground and pulled out his pistol.

“What happened?”

Jenkins spat on the ground, “They got my betsy.”

“The savages.” Timmons bent around the corner, and seeing a VC soldier dead in his sights. Ten feet away and getting closer. Timmons opened fire, holding down the trigger as each shot bucked the rifle into his arms. The VC soldier cried out in distress as his abdomen was torn open, and his chest was cut open with every shot. The soldier’s organs were plastered all over the wall. Timmons grimaced at the gruesome sight. Seeing that the coast was clear, Timmons and Jenkins moved out to find the captain’s pen.

* * *

The platoon command team was now on the move. It was about a group of ten men, loaded down with equipment. They had sent the call signal for the retrieval aircraft. All they had to do was make it to the LZ 5 miles out of Hanoi.

“Let’s move, move!” Sergeant McCoy hissed to the winded team. They were straining to run under their heavy equipment. The team was almost out of the city now, they could see the jungle ahead of them, and the road leading off.

“Go! Go! Go!” The team kept a steady run down the road into the jungle. If they could get into the cover of the foliage, they would be more secure. But McCoy felt a pitching feeling in his stomach. He sensed an uneasiness from the leaves and trees beside him. There was tension in the atmosphere. He wanted to hide – but what for?

“C’mon you little pansies, we gotta make for five miles. You can do it, you fucking pisses!” Yelled a sergeant to rally strength. Some of the privates snickered.

McCoy began to feel even more shaky. There was something definitely wrong. He didn’t like this place. Then he spotted it.

McCoy knelt down to examine it. A fresh boot print. Many fresh boot prints: Imprinted on the wet mud and grass, leading into the foliage beside the traveling command team. He knew that they were in deep shit.

He aimed his rifle into the bushes beside him and fired off shots, “AMBUSH! AMBUSH! INCOMING!” The platoon halted and looked a McCoy incredulously. They glanced all around the forest, rifles aimed at the trees. Nothing! McCoy ceased fire and he listened carefully. Still nothing.

One of the sergeants broke the silence and growled at McCoy, “What the FUCK are you trying to pull on us, McCoy? Scared me shitless!”

McCoy pointed at the footprints leading into the dense jungle beside them, “Look, there are goddamn footprints leading into the bushes, what other more obvious indicator do you need?”

“That they would already have fired and killed us already? McCoy, you just have the jitters!”

The platoon relaxed, and their rifles pointed down once again. They began walking towards the LZ shuffling through the dirt.

Without any warning, there was a crisp rifle shot from the air, and the Captain twisted down to the ground. The platoon was shocked in place for a second – and the whole forest was silent again as Anderwoski hit the ground, helmet flying off spilling bright red blood into the cake like mud.

Then the forest seemed to erupt into fire, deafening machine gun shots and rifle shots from close range. McCoy saw the men in front of him get torn apart by heavy fire while firing their M16 rifles uselessly into the air.

“INCOMING! INCOMING! GET DOWN!” Squealed a lieutenant as he began firing sporadically into the bright flashes coming from the trees. It seemed like a fireworks show on the ground, gun muzzles flashing at the platoon at point blank range. McCoy watched the rest of the platoon get shot apart – blood and chunks of flesh and bone were being thrown into the air, and showered down on the corpses. Then, all of a sudden, he felt himself being ripped off the ground, and then face down into the mud. McCoy tried to get up, but then, he collapsed again. He smelled the sickening smell of blood and open flesh, and felt burning bullets zipping above him.

McCoy then felt a searing sensation from his left knee and right arm as if a burning axe had bit through his bone. He glanced back at his body and noted that he didn’t have a leg from the knee down, and his arm was blown off. McCoy began to weaken, and he rolled over onto his back and stared into the sky. The pitter-patter of the machine gun fire began to fade, and his sensations began to numb as he drifted off into a deep, abyss-like sleep.