SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror

Thela Hun Gingeet David Benton and W.D. Gagliani

The staccato throb of the Huey’s rotors was practically deafening as the helicopter cut a path through the night sky between Command and Control Central in Kon Tum to the insertion point just south of Luang Prabang east of the Mekong in central Laos.

They were going over the fence. Flanking them on either side were their escort choppers, gunships loaded for bear.

Special Forces Sergeant Jake Carter, One-Zero of Recon Team Python, sat with the hundred-round drum magazine of the Russian RPD Light Machine Gun resting on his knee. He was staring out the Huey’s open door, past the ride-along gunner. Below them an open field of elephant grass that the boys called the Golf Course stretched in all directions, illuminated by the glow of the nearly-full moon. In the distance he could see the flash of cluster bombs pounding the Ho Chi Minh trail. He sighed and turned away from the door, refocusing his attention on the team.

Sgt. Larry Kane leaned into Carter, yelling over the heavy thrum of the bird’s engine and the rushing wind. “So what’s the pucker factor gonna be on this drop?”

“Unknown, Kane,” Carter yelled and shrugged broadly enough to be seen. “We should be in and out, two days. Not expecting anything out of the ordinary,” he lied.

“So what you’re saying is that we’re screwed?”

Carter allowed a fragile smile to cross his face and leaned back into the seat. They knew the ropes. The truth was, he really didn’t know what to expect. The mission briefing had been short and sweet. They were to observe whether there was ‘enemy activity’ at a godforsaken Taoist temple west of the Plain of Jars, far north of the panhandle. Though Carter had been team leader on a dozen MACV-SOG missions with Recon Team Python, none of them had crossed this deep into the interior. The main war zone was to the south and east, but they were flying a black op into the heart of Communist-controlled Laos and he had little idea as to why. Even if it were an NVA stronghold or training facility, it was too far from the front lines to be of major concern, especially considering that they were teetering on the cusp of the rainy season.

And, overall, it just didn’t feel right.

There was something about this one — they’d been told ahead of time they were going in black. If caught, their existence would be denied. For all intents and purposes, they were dead unless they made the extraction point.

Carter, like all his men, had volunteered for dangerous assignments. No point grousing about it now.

The Huey jinked to avoid a barrage of anti-aircraft fire, glowing green tracers suddenly surrounding them and lighting up the night. Carter grabbed his seat to brace himself as the chopper swerved evasively. A handful of pounding heartbeats later, the assault was left behind as unexpectedly as it had found them.

The pilot turned, looking over his shoulder with a grin.

“Laugh a minute,” he shouted.

The teams never found the pilot's sense of humor contagious, but you did what you had to do to get clear of the fear.

RT Python was comprised of seven men; three grunts and four Yards. Outside of Carter, Sgt. Kane was One-One, and the newer guy, Sgt. McBride, was One-Two. The three of them were Special Forces — Green Berets — and what they’d all volunteered for was duty in the Studies and Observations Group, so they had to be either crazy or gung-ho. Their Montagnard companions were all from the Bahnar tribe: Mock, Jek, Phut One, and Phut Two. The whole team were designated Bushmasters, specially trained for jungle combat. And this wasn’t their first rodeo.

Something nagged at him about that, but it was gossamer in a delicate night’s breeze.

Carter pulled a square out of his pocket, lit it with his Chinese Zippo copy, and took a deep drag. The mission was nagging, of that he was sure. Yeah, a few nerves were normal. The adrenaline rush of getting dropped into the boonies — into the unknown — was something he lived for. But this was different. It was as if that voice inside his head was warning him. Whatever they ran into, they were on their own. There wouldn’t be any Hatchet Forces or Air Cav sweeping in the clean up if they ended up in deep shit… they were already too far out, and blacked out on top of it. Why, he didn’t know. He wasn’t supposed to know. Even if they did call for an extraction, it would take hours for a slick to arrive. This was gonna be a clean fight, RT Python against whatever they found out there. But that wasn’t what was bothering Carter.

No, maybe it was that slimebag spook, Pearson of the DOD. He’d been at the briefing, quietly lurking like the snake that he was. Sure, Pearson wore Hawaiian shirts like banners and was friendly enough to your face, but it was that fake friendly of someone who was gaining your trust so you wouldn’t expect the knife when it slipped into your back. Carter didn’t like him, or any of his cronies. They were chickenshit in Carter’s opinion, but when you were deployed in Uncle Sam’s clandestine army you had to deal with the devil. It came with the package. You didn’t have to like it.

The choppers headed north along the hazy border between Laos and Thailand trying to steer clear of Charlie’s known nests. The flight seemed to take forever. Carter thought that it was probably similar to what a man would feel like on his last day on death row… waiting. The roar of the Huey’s rotors made conversation difficult — impossible if you didn’t want to blow your voice out. They didn’t want to talk anyway. They knew what needed to be done. They just wanted to get in and out alive and get back to base with the intel. And then maybe do it all over again.

He saw them all gripping their weapons, an assortment of French MAT submachine guns, Russian RPDs, and Chinese AK47s for the Yards. If they were caught or killed, none of their gear was US-made.

And that had made him nervous, sure enough.

Turning east, they flew into the mountainous region south of Luang Prabang. These weren’t the mountains Carter was familiar with from his youth, growing up in Colorado. The mountains he’d explored as a kid were mostly outcroppings of solid rock, with evergreens sprouting in the foothills. Those trees’ acidic needles kept the undergrowth to a minimum in the thin soil. No, these mountains were covered with lush growth from base to summit. They always reminded Carter of some kind of prehistoric jungle lost in the folds of time. If he’d seen a pterodactyl wheeling across the sky he wouldn’t have been surprised. There were all sorts of creatures down there — though not dinosaurs — and they were plentiful. Just about every manner of creeping crawling thing was well represented down below the upper canopy, some of them extremely dangerous.

For some reason, Carter wasn’t worried about the fauna. He tried to shake away the nagging internal voice, the sound of…

“About five minutes to insertion,” the pilot yelled back over the seats, displaying the five fingers on his hand to make sure he was understood above the noise.

Carter nodded and took a quick inventory of his equipment, for the hundredth time. He sighed and crosschecked Kane, making sure his gear was secured as well.

The Huey and its escorts came in low. They weaved between the looming mountains, cutting their path above the valleys like a river carves its own channel through living rock. The full moon was above, but there was no light from below. No sign of a nearby village, or hootch, or any people at all. And nothing to give any indication that they were near anything like an NVA military base, if that’s what they were looking for. All of which was relatively good.

“Here you are,” the pilot called out like a New York cab driver, giving Carter and the others a thumbs up. He held the Huey hovering above the wavering treetops.

Carter grasped the steel bar and leaned out the open door, staring down into the sea of blackened greenery. It was dark as midnight down beneath the triple canopy, but below that their newfangled night-vision gear would help them avoid breaking their legs when they reached the ground.

He deployed the clumsy and heavy Soviet PNV-57 night vision goggles that had been slung around his neck. He wished they could be using US-made SU49 NVGs, but they were incognito and all tell-tale gear had been nixed. He hated wearing these damned Soviet albatrosses. They felt like strapping a brick to his face and another to the back of his head, but they mostly did the trick in extremely low light — working on the same principle as a green eye. Down there where there were only the faintest traces of moonlight, there was enough light filtering down to make the goggles useful. Under a full moon like tonight’s, however, the goggles were next to useless. Above the canopy they’d be blind. Once below it, the goggles would give them what they needed. The Yards would be going in without the night gear — their eyes were accustomed to the jungle’s blackness.

Carter signaled to Jek, and the Yard fast-roped from the slick into the jungle below. Next was Phut Two, followed by Mock, then McBride, Kane, Phut One, and finally Carter himself took to the wire and dribbled downward like a spider weaving a web.

When he reached the jungle floor, the rest of the team had already set up a small perimeter around the insertion point. The three choppers wheeled away, heading back to CCC, as soon as he touched ground. The thunderous din of their spinning blades faded slowly and soon the raucous nocturnal jungle fauna had once again taken over.

The mosquitos were on him immediately, and Carter slapped one that was tickling the hairs on his neck. He could feel its not-so-tiny crushed body curled beneath his fingers.

Goddamn insects. They made life in the bush miserable. And then there was the rainy season.

“Glad to get out of the egg-beater,” Kane muttered. “I can barely feel my legs.”

Carter shushed him. He wanted to move the team away from the insertion point in case any dings had seen or heard the choppers.

They headed east by northeast, sticking to the lowlands. Jek took point, followed by the slack man, Phut Two, then Mock, McBride, Kane, and Carter, with Phut One walking sweep.

With difficulty they cut their way through the thick undergrowth with machetes that would dull much too soon. And the ‘magic’ goggles just weren’t good enough to help them keep moving rapidly through the forest depths out here in the boondocks. After a while they were all wearing the gear slung around their necks again. When they were about a couple hundred yards from insertion, Carter stopped them. They were already dragging due to the night’s heat.

“We’ll stay here ‘til morning,” he announced. “Jek, Mock, keep an eye out for watchers.” The Montagnards melted away like ghosts. The others hit the ground, grateful for the respite.

Carter threw his rucksack down and settled himself on the ground next to it. He opened the ruck, pulled out his canteen, and took a deep tug of metallic water. Finally he took off the damned goggles, tucked them and their power pack into the bag, leaned back, and closed his eyes. The machine gun lay across his legs, his finger resting on the trigger guard. He wouldn’t sleep. It wasn’t fear of the enemy that would keep him awake — it was responsibility for the team. So he listened to every sound while resting his eyes. His mind raced, not for the first time.

The sounds of night insects and tree frogs lulled Carter, calming his hardened nerves until he heard something else whispering between the endless night chirping. He bent his ear to try and capture the sound. At first he thought was that it was an enemy patrol, their gear clinking.

He listened carefully.

No, it was laughter… a child’s laughter.

He opened his eyes and turned to survey the perimeter. There, barely visible through the fronds and vines stood a slender Asian girl in a chang-ao, a traditional Chinese garment. The girl stared at Carter and held her finger up to her smiling lips. Then she beckoned him with a wave of her tiny hand.

He rose slowly from his position on the ground, checking the shapes of his sleeping teammates. No one had stirred. No one had heard the laughter. No one was awake.

He hesitated, not sure what he was doing. Or why.

He thought he might be asleep, dreaming. He pinched himself and felt it.

She was still there, half-hidden in the dense undergrowth, waving at him, beckoning him toward her.

He shrugged. Then he began to follow her.

Jesus, what am I doing?

His eyes had become remarkably well-adjusted to the dark and he followed her at an unintentional distance, unable to keep pace with the girl who was now running with one hand gathering the material of her robes. He hadn’t initially realized that he had left his machine gun behind, and when he did, he was far from the others. Too far to go back.

He was abandoning his post, but he felt compelled.

You never leave your weapon! his internal voice screamed at him.

But he had, and he couldn’t go back. He would lose the girl.

His back itched, as if someone watched from afar.

Barely in control, he pressed on through the darkness.

In time he couldn’t quite measure, Carter came to a clearing in the jungle. It was no natural clearing — the area had been burned to ash, maybe in a rogue napalm strike and Carter could still smell the characteristic petrol residue hanging in the air. It had burned the vegetation and anything else that had stood here into oblivion, leaving behind a hellish scorched landscape.

But this was too far from the war. What had happened here?

The girl was still there, a moving shadow in a sea of gray. And her rippling laughter sent chills of recognition through Carter. Yet now he set off through the ash field. With his first step he heard a clink, like he’d kicked a tin can with his foot. He looked down. There, half-wrapped on the toe of his combat boot was a set of dog tags. He reached down and picked them up, trying to study them in the dark. He flicked his fake Zippo and held them close together until he could read the letters.

It was a name he recognized: Sgt. Samuel Lund.

The memory struck Carter like a physical force. Lund had been on Carter’s first two missions with Recon Team Python. Until a booby trap left by Charlie had eviscerated him. Carter had called for a dustoff, but it was too late. Lund died while Carter tried to hold in his guts, his hands squishy with thick blood.

Carter shoved the tags into his pocket and took another cautious step. Again he heard a metallic sound, and the ground just didn’t feel right beneath his weight. Glancing down, he dreaded what he would find. He almost thought: mine! But it was as if he knew it couldn’t be a mine, that it was something stranger and more dangerous.

Beneath his feet more tags crunched. Dog tags hidden under the ash. There were tags everywhere, hundreds, maybe thousands of them.

How was this possible? This wasn’t even a war zone.

Carter jerked awake.

Shit.

He had been dreaming.

His hand was trembling. He had drifted into sleep. It wasn’t like him, not at all, yet he had. He was still at the campsite.

Dog tags were all the more peculiar to dream about, because none of them wore theirs for this op in order to remain essentially orphaned in terms of nationality. If caught, they could be tortured and shot.

He took a ragged breath and surveyed the area around them again. The faintest traces of weak daylight were beginning to filter down through the jungle. Nothing had happened. He wiped the sweat from his brow and got to his feet. He heard the echo of a child’s laughter in the back of his mind, but the dream had already begun to fade.

He kicked McBride’s booted foot, leaning in and whispering. “Get up. Get the others up.”

When everyone had assembled in a group around him, Carter spoke to them in measured tones. “Our objective is approximately nine clicks to the north, but a ways up in elevation. We’ll stick down here in the valley, sweep around this mole hill on its eastern flank then approach our target from the southeast. Until further notice, no communication other than hand signals unless absolutely necessary. Standard marching order with a five-yard spread. Stay sharp, everybody.” Carter checked his Soviet watch and wrist compass. “All right, let’s head out.”

The team wove their way through the thick foliage, Jek leading the way at point. Though the filtered sunlight was beginning to brighten the jungle in angular patterns, night’s shadows still fought for dominance beneath the canopies, and gray phantoms seemed to lurk wherever Carter trained his eyes. Despite the lingering darkness, RT Python efficiently cut their way through the valley and headed east-northeast around the base of the towering green mountain. They were pros. They got it done.

The rain that started spitting at them before morning had come fully into flower. It swept in so rapidly that Carter felt the first fat drops falling through the leaves before the storm clouds swallowed the sun. The lush growth offered little resistance to the downpour. Rain catching on leaves high above coalesced and then gushed down in heavy streams, quickly turning the rich black soil into slippery mud, covered with even more treacherous wet discarded leaves. Water dripped from the brim of Carter’s boonie hat, obscuring his vision. His dyed black fatigues — lacking any trace of insignia — were soaked through to the skin in minutes.

Apparently they had passed the cusp and the rainy season had begun. Just like that.

The team pressed on, muttering.

Goddamn rain.

As suddenly as the torrent had started, it disappeared. But instead of granting relief, the rain was followed by an oppressive heat that threatened to choke them with its cloying humidity. The jungle seemed to exhale, giving its moisture back to the air. The atmosphere grew heavy and thick. Within a half hour the rainwater that had permeated Carter’s clothes was replaced with sweat. For him there was no difference — he remained wet.

Occasionally he thought he heard a sound out of place in the tapestry of jungle noises, but when he turned it was gone. If they were being followed, the followers were good. The sense of being watched was unnerving, and he never took his finger off the trigger.

They trudged on through the heat of the day. The undergrowth was thinner here and they gave their machete arms a rest. Rounding the eastern slope, they found a narrow slow-running stream and followed along its western bank. The water was brown and murky, stirred by rainwater runoff. Judging from the steep banks, Carter guessed that the stream ran more like a river during the height of the rainy season. They forded the river where it bent its course to the west. Jek entered first and the lower half of his body disappeared in the creeping, putrid water. He trudged through the slow current across to the far bank, holding his AK47 above his head, the rest of the team following close behind.

“Ain’t seen hide nor hair of Charlie,” Kane said to Carter with disdain. “Exactly what the hell are we doing here?”

“Keep your voice down, damn it.”

Carter threw down his rucksack again after pulling out his canteen. He sipped the lukewarm water then wiped off the few drops that rolled down his chin with his sleeve. “Jek, Phut One — take a look around,” he ordered.

The two tribesmen quickly and silently vanished into the jungle, and in seconds it appeared they’d never been there at all. Thin and whipcord tough, the mountain tribesmen became ruthless fighters when trained. They matched, man for man, just about every Green Beret Carter had ever known — but they were temperamental and their loyalties were sometimes difficult to pin down.

“Come on, One-Zero,” Kane persisted, the others looking on. “What the hell’s going on? What kind of recon is this really?”

“You know exactly what I know, Kane. We get to the top of this shit pile and have a look around. We relay what we find. We haul ass. That’s what we’re doing here.”

“Well I don’t like it,” said Kane. “We ain’t anywhere near the war.” He pulled a filterless cigarette from his shirt pocket. Carter tossed him his knock-off Zippo. “Thanks.” Kane lit the smoke.

“Do you ever like it?” McBride said, half-smiling. He was sitting on a bamboo log with his boot off, checking to make sure there weren’t any bloated black leeches on his leg. If there were, the bites could become infected fast, and that meant trouble.

“Mock,” Carter called out quietly. “Give me those funny books.” The indigenous soldier came at a run, grinning.

The Yard reached into his ruck and produced a handful of curled maps, handing them to his One-Zero. Carter unfolded them and took a look, mostly to placate Kane.

“Look here,” Carter said to Kane. “This is where we are. Right by the blue line,” he pointed at the map, “and this is where we’re heading. We should be there by sundown.”

McBride had joined them and was standing beside Carter. He pointed upslope. “Up there?” he asked. Carter nodded.

Kane said something, but Carter found himself suddenly transfixed by the praying mantis that was moving in slow motion over Kane’s shoulder. He heard the sound of pieces of tin clinking together. Carter slipped his hand into his pocket and ran his fingertips along the metal edges of the dog tags that rested there. A wave of dizziness swept through him, and he was suddenly afraid to pull the dog tags out, afraid of what he would find, afraid of the name he would find press-punched into the metal.

Lund, Samuel.

Or Carter, Jacob?

“Are you all right, Carter?” Kane was grabbing his shoulder.

Carter looked up and saw the mantis flit away. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Well, check it out, you looked like there was nobody home for a minute there, know what I mean?” Kane’s brilliant blue eyes were set in a piercing stare.

Carter pushed Kane’s hand away. “I said I’m fine. Where the hell are Jek and Phut One? We need to get this show on the road. I want us to be up there while there’s still light.” He took another tug from the canteen, his hand trembling.

As if on cue, the two Yards burst through the vegetation. Phut’s arm was draped over Jek’s shoulder, his eyes wide and staring. All the color seemed to have drained from him. Jek was holding his kinsman upright.

“What the hell happened?” Carter demanded.

Before Jek could answer, Phut stammered and spit out something in his dialect.

Carter shook his head; he didn’t speak the indigenous lingo. It all sounded like gibberish to him. The Yards spoke halting English, enough to be understood by their American allies, so he had no idea why this one was trying his patience. Carter’s nerves already frayed, he felt ready to explode. The men sensed his anger and eyed each other silently.

Jek spoke, keeping Carter from losing his shit. “He say that he see his mother… out there, in the jungle.”

Carter shook his head, confused. He couldn’t even form a sentence through his frustration. His hands and feet tingled.

“How the fuck is that even possible?” Kane asked.

“It is not,” said Jek with his thick accent. “His mother is dead, many year.”

Jek helped settle his countryman on the ground. Phut practically collapsed into a shaking heap, curling into himself in a semi-fetal position. He cried helplessly.

“Did you see someone?” Carter asked, “Anyone? Something?”

Jek shook his head, his face sober.

“Kane, take Mock and have a look around. Mac, hang with me.”

Kane sighed, but followed the orders.

Carter reached into his pocket. His heart stopped beating for a painful moment.

The tags he had held there a minute before were now gone.

He shook his head to dispel the mounting haze.

What the hell is going on?

Pearson. That son of a bitch spooky cocksucker had done something to them. Had to have fucked with them somehow.

Maybe he’d slipped something funny into their Dapsone… maybe some kind of hallucinogen? Or maybe they’d sprayed it in the air before inserting the team? Maybe there was another team out here, watching them, seeing what happened, judging how they reacted?

Typical DOD voodoo shit.

Who knew what the bastards were up to here in these dense jungle locations.

Carter rubbed his temples. He asked Jek, “Is he gonna be all right?” He jerked his head at Phut One.

“Yah, he will be ho-kay,” Jek answered, nodding too rapidly. Then the Yard knelt by his shaken compatriot, talking quietly in their Bahnar language.

A chill raced through Carter; he had a bad feeling about this op. He took one more swig from his canteen before stowing it back in his rucksack as he waited for Kane and Mock to return from their sweep. Around him the jungle was teeming. Life was so thick here you couldn’t move without it touching you, breathing on you, leaning on you. Carter had learned to ignore most of it because the inability to tell the difference between a bead of sweat running down the back of your neck and a poisonous spider crawling down the collar of your shirt could drive a guy nuts. But today he couldn’t seem to blot it out. He was having trouble sorting out the important information from the trivial. His nerves seemed on edge while his senses felt dulled.

Today it all seemed new, and Carter was overloading.

He sensed it, but couldn’t stop it.

Something rustled in the undergrowth. Carter crouched and trained his machine gun on the movement. He relaxed his finger off the trigger. It was Kane and Mock, breaking quietly through the thick growth.

“Nothin’ out there, Sarge,” Kane said, disgusted. “And I mean nothing. No trace of Charlie whatsoever. No footpaths, no huts, no sign of anyone even somewhat civilized,” and with a sideways glance at Phut One and Jek, “…or their mothers.”

“All right then, let’s move out,” said Carter.

“Move out to where?”

“We’re going to the top of this mountain.”

“There’s nothing out here, man. We’re literally in the middle of nowhere.”

“Then it’ll be like a vacation, right?”

They left the riverbank and resumed their ascent. The higher they moved the more hostile the growth became, broad leaves became saw blades, stems seemed encrusted with nasty barbed thorns, and tangled vines grew into impenetrable walls of vegetation. Biting and stinging insects seemed to grow in both size and number. It was as if the land itself were trying to dissuade the team; keep them from completing their mission.

Ahead, Kane signaled Carter: get down. Carter turned to wave down Mock, who was now taking up the rear in lieu of Phut One, but he could see no trace of him. He scrutinized the underbrush, but nothing moved. Leaves and branches hung motionless. Carter was about to retrace his steps when a small stone bounced off his shoulder. He jerked, swiveling the RPD’s muzzle around, his finger brushing the trigger.

Kane, trying to get his attention down the path they’d made.

Jesus.

Kane and McBride were conferring. They beckoned Carter.

“What’s going on?” Carter whispered, approaching cautiously at a crouch.

“I don’t know,” McBride said, “I–I lost the rest of the team.”

“What?”

“I don’t know where they went, Sarge. I was right behind Phut. He was right there…” McBride motioned with his hand, “and then he was just gone.”

Carter rose up from his crouch, and stood looking over his shoulder where Mock should have been. The other two special ops soldiers followed suit.

“It was like… like the jungle just swallowed them,” McBride mumbled, almost in a daze. Trying to convince himself.

“What are we gonna do, Carter?” Kane grabbed him by the elbow. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Carter. “We’re gonna finish the mission.”

He wasn’t fine though, was he?

“No really, check it — it’s like you’re out of it today.”

“I’m fine, Kane! Let’s get to the top of the fuckin’ mountain and get the hell out of here. Sound like a plan to you?”

He realized he’d turned the RPD to face them, then turned it away again.

“What about the Yards?” McBride was jittery, his eyes searching, never still.

“We’ll have to report them missing, but first we need to accomplish what we were sent out here to accomplish.”

“Which is?”

“Look,” said Kane, “something’s seriously fucked here.”

“I know, I agree. But the top of this mountain is gonna be our best extraction point if we can’t make the scheduled rendezvous anyway. Can’t go back down. We might as well hightail it up there. I don’t like it either. As for the Yards… I don’t have an answer. I… I have some theories. Nothin’ I’d say out loud in sane company. Not that you guys are sane.”

McBride and Kane looked each other up and down and nodded. Reluctantly.

“We all right, then?” Carter asked. “Let’s head out. Mac, take point.”

Nervous and twitchy, fingers on triggers, the three remaining members of RT Python continued their climb, McBride in the lead.

In time, after struggling against the heat, the voracious insects, and the nearly impenetrable vegetation, they made the summit just as the hazy setting sun bathed it in a red firelight glow. They stood just inside the jungle’s crown, catching their breath, attempting to calm their racing hearts.

The flat mountaintop was oddly devoid of vegetation, with one exception. Near the center of what looked like an open field, a single huge tree stood like a lonely sentinel. Unlike its brethren in the jungle below the summit line, here the tree was not required to stretch upward for life-giving sunlight, but instead could expand outward — and it had. This tree had branched out low on the trunk, and often, creating the appearance of a gigantic bush.

As Team Python cautiously entered the courtyard, the reason there was no plant life clogging the peak became clear. Sometime in the temple’s long history, the priests had meticulously paved the area with large flat stones, leaving only the cracks between each slab to foster the sparse plant life, which turned out to be mostly stunted weeds. At the far end of this manmade clearing at the mountain’s summit squatted the temple itself, its columns and crumbling walls bound with twisting vines. The stone walls themselves were stained green with moss.

Carter’s nerves didn’t keep him from wondering how in goddamn hell those flat stone slabs, each of them the size and thickness of a king-size bed, had been transported up the mountain. It hadn’t been helicopters, as the paving was clearly hundreds of years old.

Kane kicked at a weed poking up from between the massive stones. “Looks like an NVA stronghold to me,” he said sarcastically.

“Stay frosty,” Carter ordered. “We’ve already lost four men on this mission.”

“They probably realized we were out of our minds and ditched us.”

“That’s enough, Kane.” Carter motioned his remaining team members into flanking positions. Even though the temple seemed abandoned, he wasn’t taking any chances.

After the others had repositioned themselves, Carter moved forward in a crouch and took a sheltered position behind that strange single tree. McBride and Kane stayed near the jungle cover on either side of the courtyard.

Carter poked his head around the tree’s bulk and stared into the shadows inside the abandoned temple. It certainly didn’t look occupied. At least not for the last hundred years. He motioned his men forward until they had flanked the building’s entrance. Then Carter moved forward, his gun muzzle trained on the darkened doorway. The three soldiers came together and, with his RPD still aimed at the shadows, Carter made a motion and Kane stepped up through wall-rubble and entered the temple. The darkness swallowed him as if he had never been there at all. McBride followed him and duly disappeared, fading into the darkness. Carter brought up the rear.

Carter’s eyes took a few moments to adjust to the low light. He cursed himself for forgetting to try the night vision gear, but he figured it wouldn’t have worked. Slowly details became clear. The temple was destroyed. Half the roof had caved in and a matting of vines had thatched the hole like a chaotic spider’s web. Shade-craving plants had grown between the indoor stones as tenaciously as their sun-loving kin in the courtyard. It was obvious that no one had called this place home in an impossibly long time. Not home or temple or even shelter.

The mission was a bust. Carter had to wonder for the hundredth time about the intel on this one. Or had Pearson, the DOD’s favorite spook, been playing them all along for some twisted voodoo experiment?

He lowered his rucksack to the stone floor.

“All right, fuck this, I’m calling in an extraction,” he said.

Carter’s voice echoed in the empty shrine.

“Hey, Kane. Mac? Hey, where the hell are you guys?”

He whirled, his gun trembling in his hands. Suddenly it was so heavy he wanted to drop it. He lowered the muzzle and shuffled around the floor, on which the moist remnants of dead leaves clung, forming a mucky slurry.

Hell, there aren’t even any footprints outside of mine.

How could it be?

“Kane! McBride!”

He stumbled back out into the gloaming. Night was settling in quickly, and the crimson sky had turned a deep purple, like a bruise on the universe.

And he was alone.

“Kane! Mac!”

Carter walked the perimeter of the courtyard in jagged steps, calling out to his missing men. An increasingly loud chorus of insects, nocturnal birds, and animals answered him from the edge of the flat mountain, where the jungle resumed its dominance, but there was no other answer.

The shock of his complete isolation shot a sudden chill through him, and he shivered like a man with the ague. He turned in a staggering circle, aiming his RPD at the phantoms. The machine gun was heavy again, and the muzzle drooped as his muscles could no longer hold it upright. He dropped the gun with a clatter that echoed loudly and drove birds from their perches and caused something else to rustle in the thick vegetation.

If this was the enemy, he was now unarmed.

“Mac?” he whispered, his voice cracking. “Kane?”

The jungle fell abnormally silent, as if it were also listening for a response. Paranoia washed over him in a sudden wave. Carter felt the eyes on him, watching. But it didn’t feel like a person hiding behind the tree line observing him, but more like the jungle itself was just a reflection and behind the mirrored glass something scrutinized his every move.

He stumbled back from the jungle’s edge and into the temple proper, dug the radio from his sack, and called for a Huey slick. When his trembling finger released the chunky push-to-talk button, static was the only reply.

Static and something… something he couldn’t define.

A sudden gentle breeze stirred the clearing and behind him Carter heard a tinkling sound, like muffled windchimes and light creaking in the one tree’s branches, and something else…

It was a child, laughing.

He spun around.

It took a long moment to register, but the bush-like tree in the courtyard had changed. All of its leaves had fallen to the stones below, where the breeze stirred them in tiny circles. They had been replaced on the bare branches by dog tags, thousands or maybe millions of them, jingling in the wind.

Carter blinked rapidly. Suspended from two of the thicker branches were Kane and Mac, hanging by their necks, vines wrapped around them. Their eyes were bloody holes.

Stumbling forward in a trance, he tripped over his abandoned RPD, landed on his knees and barely felt the pain.

He looked up, blinking again. Now he could see the bodies of the Montagnards suspended in the same way.

He cried out, a single strangled scream that died before it had completely escaped his throat.

Beneath the tree, he saw a girl dressed in a chang-ao sitting on the back of a huge black tortoise. She was giggling, one hand almost concealing her childish smile. Carter was transfixed by her as the tortoise slowly ambled forward, scraping over the stones. The girl’s eyes seemed to glow with white light.

Though he didn’t initially notice, the tortoise somehow transformed into a crane and flew into the night sky with the child still on its back.

Carter watched them soar upward, the white feathers of the bird becoming brighter and brighter until he had to shield his eyes from the light. And he felt its wings beat down with hurricane force winds that blew through the tree and made the tags jingle.

Then the crane was gone, replaced by a bigger bird, a Huey gunship — its cold spotlight glaring down on Carter like a single cyclopean eye. It took him into its body.

Pearson, known as the spook behind his back at Da Nang Air Force base, stalked into the darkened room fresh from the helipad, a stack of tan files clutched in his hand. “Has he said anything?” he asked.

Colonel Denning glanced over his shoulder at Pearson and shook his head. “Still not a word.”

“So we still have no real idea what’s happening to him?”

“Nope.”

Pearson stared into the bright interrogation room through the one-way mirror. Sergeant Jake Carter was seated at a nondescript government-issue table facing them, a blank expression pasted on his face. Another soldier was in the room with him, on the other side of the table questioning him — a captain. There seemed to be no response from Carter, no matter what the captain said or asked.

“Has he been like this the whole time? Two months?”

“Yeah, more or less.” Denning waved a hand. The time no longer mattered, as far as he was concerned.

“Why are we here today?”

“Well, today he made a face.”

“A face? You got me here from Saigon because Carter made a face?”

“It’s considered quite the event among the medical staff,” the colonel said, frowning. “As if you cared.” Carter was one of his boys. He cared.

Pearson ignored the snideness. “What’s the deal with him again? Remind me.”

The colonel sighed. “The docs say it’s traumatic psychosis — dissociation disorder. He’s semi-catatonic. But there is something going on in there, in his brain. Something continuously traumatic. ”

Pearson looked in at the sergeant, who seemed to be staring at him through the glass. It made the agent uncomfortable, so he stalked to the other side of the room.

“I’ve lost four teams,” Pearson said. “His was the first, he’s the only one who came back, and we don’t know shit about why. Or what they saw up there.”

“With all due respect,” Denning said, displaying very little of it, “we lost the teams. You have lost control of your fucking mission. Maybe you and your spook buddies should just give up and move on to some other sampan on the river.”

Pearson ignored the tone; he was used to it. “That’s a good reason to send in another team, right? We need to find those missing soldiers and Yards.”

Carter’s stare from the other side of the mirror once again focused on Pearson. The agent nonchalantly moved around the room to avoid the sergeant’s burrowing eyes. They made him unaccountably nervous.

“What exactly are we dealing with, Agent Pearson?” Anger rose in the colonel’s voice. “What the hell have your people been up to, on that mountain? I don’t think you care about the missing teams, not at all.”

Pearson looked away from the colonel and the glass partition, both. “We don’t know what it is, but the natives are scared shitless by it.” He combed his rough hair with a tanned hand. “We don’t need something like that falling into the enemy’s hands.”

“You’re assuming they saw a weapon?” Denning was incredulous. “That’s it?”

Pearson ignored him. He’d gotten good at doing the Company’s bidding, wielding rank and power, and ultimately dismissing the Army’s objections to every little thing.

“I’d say that’s quite enough, Colonel. We don’t need any new offensive tools used against us, and Charlie’s using his influence in Laos to aid the enemy. We damned well do assume it’s a weapon. It seems to be working on you.”

The colonel muttered a curse and turned away. He knew who swung the bigger balls, unfortunately. Anywhere else…

Meanwhile Pearson had noticed that in the other room, the sergeant’s eyes seemed to glow, surreal light shining from behind his staring irises. The spook kept pacing, trying to get out from under Carter’s zombie gaze.

He made up his mind. “Just send in another team, Colonel. That’ll come across your desk as an order within the hour.”

“Goddamn you, isn’t it enough…”

The colonel’s voice faded in and out as Pearson was suddenly entranced by Carter’s eyes, which grew brighter and brighter until he had to squint to avoid the painful glow.

Pearson felt a breeze blowing, and when he opened his eyes he was staring at a golden sunset as the wind fluttered the weeds on a flat mountaintop. Behind him there was a light ringing sound, like muffled windchimes clanking in the tree branches and, he would later swear, a child’s mocking laughter.

The staccato throb of the Huey’s rotors was deafening as the helicopter cut its path through the night sky. The insertion point was just ahead, south of Luang Prabang and east of the Mekong in central Laos.

They were going over the fence. Their escort, two gunships loaded for bear, flanked them.

Special Forces Sergeant Jake Carter, One-Zero of Recon Team Python, sat with the hundred round drum magazine of the Russian RPD Light Machine Gun resting on his knee.

He was staring out the Huey’s open door, past the ride-along gunner.

Below them an open field of elephant grass that the boys called the Golf Course stretched in all directions, illuminated by the glow of the nearly full moon.

He sighed and turned away from the door, refocusing his attention on the team. Kane and Mac and others.

In his memory, some windchimes and a child’s laughter seemed to play over and over, like an out of tune recording. It was a tape loop, and it was always out of tune.

A familiar flat mountaintop temple awaited him for the hundredth time, and he tried to remember his team members’ names.

Maybe this time it’ll be different.

He wasn’t sure what the voice in his head intended to say, all he knew was that he hoped so.

“Five minutes to insertion…”

Carter got ready to face it all again.