The Destroyer - 57 - The Destroyer 057 - Date with Death by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
ISBN: 0-7408-0851-6
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:52:38+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Most­ly he re­mem­bered the bod­ies.

It hap­pened on some jun­gle hill on the out­skirts of some jun­gle vil­lage in Nam. Re­mo’s pla­toon had run out of ra­tions and were for­ag­ing for food, feast­ing on ex­ot­ic plumed birds and pre­his­toric-​look­ing greens. They’d held the Hill for more than six months. It looked like time to get out.

Again.

On­ly ev­ery time the food ran out, chop­pers would fly in from Malaya or Suma­tra with more. And with the chop­pers would come a fresh in­flux of sniper fire on the camp.

It was use­less. Re­mo knew it, and so did ev­ery­body else in the out­fit. Maybe in the whole army. You can’t hold a hill with sev­en­ty men when you’re sur­round­ed by an in­ex­haustible sup­ply of en­emy firearms.

Still, they held it, for weeks, months. And while the men were be­ing picked off one by one, the chop­pers kept fly­ing in with more food for the ones who were still alive.

The chop­pers nev­er brought in re­place­ment troops. The on­ly men that flew in­to that hell­hole were oc­ca­sion­al CIA agents, look­ing for God knew what. They came with their sun­glass­es and fan­cy hand­guns and stayed awhile and didn’t talk to any­body. Then the CIA men would leave on the next food chop­per.

Some­times the en­list­ed men would ask the CIA ex­perts when they were get­ting off the Hill, but the in­tel­li­gence men ei­ther didn’t know or wouldn’t talk. They didn’t have much to do with the army and didn’t in­ter­fere.

Even with the bod­ies.

They were the CO’s idea.

They start­ed ap­pear­ing af­ter the first month on the Hill. The men were washed out by then, filthy and iso­lat­ed and scared to go to sleep at night. The on­ly thing that sus­tained them was the type of black hu­mor pe­cu­liar to men who faced death too of­ten to take it se­ri­ous­ly any­more.

All but the CO. He was a ma­jor, and he thrived on the Hill. Ev­ery morn­ing he was up be­fore the rest of the pla­toon, dressed and shaved and whistling. He slept like a rock and woke up ready to kill. The ma­jor was at his best dur­ing an at­tack, es­pe­cial­ly when he could fight hand to hand. More than once, Re­mo had seen him throw back his head in laugh­ter while he stran­gled a Vi­et Cong in­vad­er with his bare hands.

As time went by, while the oth­er men were qui­et­ly de­scend­ing to sub­hu­man lev­el, the ma­jor on­ly got clean­er and brighter and more ea­ger. He loved the ac­tion on the Hill. It sent a shiv­er down ev­ery­one’s back when they re­al­ized that he was nev­er go­ing to pull them out, and that the rea­son was be­cause he loved it.

Then the bod­ies came. One swel­ter­ing sum­mer morn­ing Re­mo and the oth­ers got up to find the mu­ti­lat­ed bod­ies of six dead VC strung on a wire on the edge of camp. They were tied by their wrists. Their open eyes and gap­ing wounds were al­ready black with crawl­ing flies.

“A lit­tle re­minder to the en­emy, boys,” the ma­jor said with a grin, as his troops stared with as­ton­ish­ment.

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