A River in May by Wilson Edward

Author:Wilson, Edward [Wilson, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Arcadia Books Limited
Published: 2007-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

At first light the surrounding jungle was thumped and pummeled by bombs and helicopter rockets in preparation for the arrival of the extraction helicopters. As soon as the smoke cleared a huge marine Chinook hovered into position over the teams. There was a ladder hanging from the belly of the helicopter: Quentin hooked the dead Marine to the bottom rung and then clambered up. Lopez and the others followed him. It was impossible to winch them in: the teams that were extracted this way simply attached themselves to the ladder by snap-links and swayed in the breeze until they got back to base.

They ascended through a swirling maelstrom of throbbing noise, whipped dust, earth, leaf and wood. Everything, thought Lopez, seemed to be working to plan. The down blast of the rotors had blown away the poncho that the marines had wrapped around the corpse. The seat of the dead marine’s trousers had been burned away when the lightning bolt had passed through his body into the damp earth, Lopez could see the burn marks on his buttocks.

For the first time Lopez started to relax and feel how wonderful it was, what a relief it was, to get out of that place. Just as he was getting use to the idea of being safe and alive, he heard something go ‘pop’ – and saw a stream of yellow smoke billowing in the wake of the helicopter. He looked up. The smoke appeared to be coming out of Quentin’s chest. He was wildly flailing about with his arms and legs in every direction, attached to the ladder only by his shoulder harness and snap-link. The pin of a smoke grenade had snagged on something and pulled out. There wasn’t any explosive in the grenade, but there was a phosphorous element that was emitting a scorching scalding white flame. Lopez could see that Quentin was going wild, his face distorted with pain and his mouth screaming, but the cries were lost in the wind. Lopez unhooked his snap-link and started to climb up to help him. He ducked when Quentin’s rifle slipped off his shoulder and fell into the jungle. There wasn’t enough time. The flame burnt through the rest of Quentin’s harness webbing. Lopez watched him fall – it seemed to take such a long time – still trailing a plume of yellow smoke, into the green sea of vegetation. Meanwhile the radio operator’s corpse was twisting in the wind like a rag doll; it was attached to the ladder by its feet, and the arms seemed to be waving a grotesque farewell. Smoke continued to billow from under the trees. One of the gunships made a low pass over the spot, then flew on.

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