Free Rendezvous by Nelson DeMille Page B

amount to much, considering how exposed we were in this burned-out terrain. So, if the sniper was still there, he’d have taken a few more shots by now. I called out, “Report.”
    Everyone who was alive a few minutes ago was still alive.
    I took a deep breath and rolled twice, then a third time over Alf’s body and came to a motionless stop on top of his outstretched arm. I snatched the radiophone out of his stiffening fingers and put it to my ear, waiting for the shot that would blow my brains out. I squeezed the send button and said in the mouthpiece, “Royal Duck Six, this is Black Weasel.” I released the send button, and I pressed the earpiece hard against my ear, but there was dead silence. I tried again, but there wasn’t even a radio hum or the sound of breaking squelch coming through the earpiece. The radio was as dead as Alf Muller.
    I waited for the impact of a bullet somewhere in my body. I could almost feel the hot steel tearing into me.
    I waited. I got pissed off. I stood and called out to my patrol, “If I go down, you scatter!”
    I stood there and nothing happened.
    I ordered again, “Report.”
    The seven other survivors reported again.
    I looked down at Alf Muller and saw now the bullet hole in his radio. I walked along the line of the patrol and saw my men lying in the black ash, their heads turning toward me, and some of them saying, “Get down, Lieutenant! You crazy?”
    You get this sixth sense that it’s not your turn that day, that you’re okay now, that fate has spared you for something worse later.
    I found Landon facedown like Muller, and like Muller there was a single hole in the top of his radio. The battery is in the bottom; the guts are in the top. The sniper knew that and was able to put a single round through the electronics and into the spine of both radio operators.
    What I didn’t understand was why the sniper didn’t take out at least a few other guys. He certainly had the time, had the range, had a clear field of fire, and obviously was a good shot.
    Actually, I knew the answer. This guy was playing with us. There was no other reason for his actions. A little psychological warfare, played with a deadly rifle instead of propaganda leaflets or Radio Hanoi broadcasts. A message to the Americans. And the game wasn’t over.
    Snipers think and act differently from normal people, and our own snipers, some of whom I’d met, liked to play games, too. It gets boring waiting for hours or days or weeks for a target. The sniper’s mind does weird things during the long, lonely waits, so when a target finally shows up in the telescopic lens, the sniper becomes a comedian and does funny things. Funny to them, not to the targets. An American sniper once told me he’d shot the hashish pipe out of an enemy soldier’s mouth.
    I thought about sharing these thoughts with my men, but if they hadn’t figured it out already, then they didn’t need to know, or they’d know soon enough.
    Decision time. I said, “Okay, we’ve got to leave these guys for a body recovery detail. Strip the bodies, and let’s get moving.”
    There wasn’t a lot of enthusiastic movement until finally Sergeant Dawson stood and said, “You heard the lieutenant. Move it!”
    Everyone got up slowly, heads and eyes darting around like cornered prey. The men stripped the bodies of the two dead radio operators, removing anything that could be of use to the enemy: rifles, ammo, canteens, dog tags, rations, compasses, boots, rucksacks, and so forth.
    Dawson asked me, “How about the radios?”
    “Let’s take them,” I replied. “Maybe we can make one good radio out of two.”
    We moved quickly out of the deforested area and into a thick growth of bamboo that offered some concealment, but gave us away by the movement of the tall, leafy shoots as we macheteed and moved our way through.
    We spent the night in the bamboo, forming a defensive perimeter, and we allowed ourselves the belief that we’d shaken the