Night Fighters 3 Out of the Fire by David Sherman

Author:David Sherman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

At the same time, a couple of kilometers away

The flickering movement in the paddies stopped at the sound of the mortar firing its first illumination round. Zeitvogel waited patiently for several minutes for it to start again. In the dark of night you don't see things by looking directly at them; you see with peripheral vision, out of the corners of your eyes. Look directly at something, and the gray shadow it is at night blends in with the gray shadows of everything else under the moon and the stars. Zeitvogel unfocused his eyes and let them rove from side to side, looking for any hint of movement or mass in the paddies. There was nothing to be seen under the stars. After a while, with the sounds of the fight on the river booming distantly to his rear, he curved his fingers and thumbs into tight tubes and held them in front of his eyes like binoculars. The small peepholes he looked through limited the breadth of his field of vision and brought everything into sharper focus. Details and shapes can be seen at night using this technique, but only if you already know where to look. Zeitvogel didn't know exactly where to look, but he had a good idea. So he looked and thought he saw a few darker lumps scattered on what should have been a smooth surface broken by the flat lines of paddy dikes, but he couldn't be positive that he actually saw them—or of what they were. On another night the tall black Marine might wait and watch longer and then ask for an illumination round so he could see what was out there. If it was VC, his people would have light to see them, to aim their weapons—to waste them. If it was no one, he would move. But tonight the mortar was busy on the river, lighting up and pounding on a flotilla of sampans that Randall and Ruizique had ambushed. The mortar might be busy on the river for a long time and Zeitvogel didn't want to disrupt it from what it was doing to give him a candle where there might not be a target. He had to know what, if anything, was out there, so he got together with Hempen and Collard Green. "I think someone's out there," he said. "I'm going to recon it. Swap blades with me, little bro." He held his bayonet hilt first to Hempen. The short Marine hesitated a second before taking it and handing over his own K-bar. The legendary Marine killing knife with a seven-inch blade looked like a penknife in Zeitvogel's huge hand. "I want Pee Wee to go with me," he said to Collard Green. "Two of us on a recon. Blades only, no rifles. Okay?" The Popular Forces squad leader nodded and went to get the tiny Vietnamese the Marines called Pee Wee. "Anybody got a sidearm?" Zeitvogel asked himself. He didn't say it aloud because he knew no one in his patrol did.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.