Haha... hi! It's been ages since I've given this fic (or anything else other than work) attention. I can only beg pardon for the lackluster writing, I'm trying to get back on the horse after a very long respite indeed. I know, I know - it's not very long and is pretty much devoid of dialogue. Again, all apologies. ^_^
XXX
Cambodia/Vietnam Border, July 5, 1969, 0630 Hours.
A twisting, grey filament crawled from the tip of the cigarette. The orange light pulsed and faded, pulsed and faded in a calm and even rhythm.
Had it been minutes or hours since the supple leather of his jacket settled in a tired pool at his feet? Since the sweat-damp t-shirt was rent from him? Since the mosquitoes tattooed his newly-exposed flesh with little bloody badges? They had wanted him to anticipate what was to come, wanted the fear to build.
Instead, he'd watched the creeping blush of morning beyond the crude door of the hut. He'd willed the oppressive abattoir stink and the faint gasps of his fellow captive to recede. He'd thought, instead, of his grandmother.
He was seven. Reedy, tanned, grinning, and back from an afternoon at the creek behind the farm, he held out a bucket of shiners. A dip net balanced on his left shoulder. To his adult mind, both arms seemed no bigger than matchsticks, and were peppered with mosquito welts. His grandmother had smiled her crooked smile and stubbed out her cigarette, never-minding the drip, drip, drip from the net. Her hair was still mostly ash-brown and tied up with a faded blue bandanna. She'd taken the bucket and settled it in the deep kitchen sink, then fetched a box of baking soda from a shelf above the stove. A few drops of water in a teacup, a few shakes of powder and she'd produced a thick white paste. Her long, tapered fingers, cool and stained with nicotine, dabbed the paste on his bites.
"You're just as sweet as can be, HM," she'd said. "That's why they bite ya."
He'd been able to hold on to that feeling, her cool fingers, the warm rasp of her voice - even as the compact soldier with the cigarette wound a rope around his biceps. Even as the tension increased, forcing his arms behind his back, he thought of those shiners frying in her big black skillet. Even as the knots were secured, his shoulders burning from the strain, he thought of how, over those little fried fishes and slices of cool melon, he'd first confessed his dream of flight.
When the first blows landed, lighting little fires along his ribcage, warming the taut muscles of his abdomen - he'd been sitting at the kitchen table in Spearman, Texas. But the pain caught up with him, and the tide rolled in, bringing him back to himself. To the Nam. To this no-name village. To this hut. To the shouting. To the demands for information.
Time expanded.
Contracted.
In.
Out.
Pulsed.
Faded.
His world reduced to the glowing tip of the guerrilla's cigarette. Minutes? Hours? Captain HM Murdock had lost all sense of the present.
When the first punch landed below the belt, time became suddenly, sharply irrelevant.
xxx
Lieutenant Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith was decidedly irritated. It wasn't that things were going contrary to plan - it was all coming together very nicely. Well, as nicely as one could expect considering that they mightn't live until lunchtime. It was the unpleasant discovery of an impromptu and poorly-dug latrine at the east end of the village. It was an obstacle that, considering the configuration of the huts, robbed him of much needed cover.
A few Charlie patrolled the center of the village in lazy, lopsided circles, their grumbling acknowledgment of each other punctuated by yawns. That, at least, was in his favor.
While he couldn't see his teammates, Hannibal could almost sense them moving into position, waiting for his signal. He could almost feel the silent shift of Sergeant Baracas as he settled his formidable bulk into the dense tangle of brush. Lieutenant Peck, stationed in a cluster of trees to the west, would be scanning the site with his sharp blue eyes, his strong jaw tensing and relaxing, tensing and relaxing the way it always did before go-time.
Hannibal fingered the cigar in his top pocket and checked his watch. 06:59. One minute.
As the closest guard passed and then pressed on, turning his back to Hannibal's position, the colonel stepped from behind a tree. He leaped, stag-like, over the latrine pit and paused. His heart thudded. He'd made very little noise, and Charlie up ahead continued his sleepy amble toward the west end of the village. Peck would find him.
Hannibal stooped into a crouching run, the weak morning light sliding over his lean form and only briefly catching on the silvery strands of hair that shot through the rest of his dark crop like lightning. He paused next to his target, a rickety hay cart. Long, square-tipped fingers fished into a pants pocket and produced a packet of waterproof matches. He squinted at the northernmost hut, the makeshift prison. Head cocked, Hannibal caught the faintest noise beneath the chatter of morning in the jungle. It was the unmistakable thud of fists on flesh. His mouth pressed into a grim line. He popped the matches alight and waited patiently as the initial flare settled to a slow burn. With an almost casual flick of his wrist, he pitched the small flame into the cart, willing the hay to be consumed.
xxx
In her perch at the south end of the village, Second Lieutenant Katie Dixon stretched along a sturdy limb like a leopard. To the casual observer she might appear to be drowsing, so languid was her pose. The eye pressed to the rifle scope, however, was sharp and watchful - flicking, scanning, squinting in an endless pattern. The small brown men in rag-tag uniforms morphed from men to deer and back again.
Men.
Deer.
Men.
The signal would be obvious, Colonel Smith had assured her. After that, it was up to her to cover the three soldiers as they stormed the little blip of the village and searched for POWs. Searched for her brother Will. Searched for Captain Murdock.
Captain Murdock.
Before he melted into the predawn jungle, he'd placed a helmet on her head. Beneath that helmet now, her ponytails dripped sweat, her scalp crawled with fear, anticipation and likely a few inquisitive ants. He was an odd man, she thought. He was graceful and rangy, quick and kind, manic and very, very clever. She recalled the brush of his lips against her sweaty forehead in the Huey - a kiss she now regarded as a talisman, a ward against harm so long as he lived.
She hoped he lived.
She gathered her focus and aimed it, laser-like, down the scope. She made out the figure of Colonel Smith, the growing flames inside the hay cart. Her finger twitched on the trigger of the M-16. Forcing her breath into a slow and even rhythm, she watched as Colonel Smith broke into a run, shoving the hay cart ahead of him towards a single hut at the center of the village. According to Lieutenant Peck's best guess, the VC were using it to cache weapons and fuel. As she fixed her eye on Colonel Smith, he wedged the burning cart into the doorway of the storage hut, then tucked and rolled for cover behind the rusty hull of a jeep.
An orange burst of flame bloomed at the heart of the village, followed by a satisfying roar as the fuel inside the hut ignited. A staccato series of pops punctuated the explosion as the ammunition caught fire. Alarmed and brandishing weapons, the guerrillas swarmed from all corners of the village towards the great tower of flame.
An obvious signal indeed.
Men.
Deer.
Men.
Deer.
Lieutenant Dixon kept her eye to the scope and waited for the hunt to begin.
XXX
P.S. It's also weird. Thank you for reading. ^_^