Free Slob by Rex Miller Page A

noise.
    Hillside Killer is a location where they are inserting this four man fireteam. Hillside Killer is actually a man light as Chaingang will move out on his own, a one-man fireteam in effect, and he smiles from ear to ear as he contemplates his lonely and thrilling jungle ambush that awaits him.
    The other team members on board Diamond 21 will rendezvous with personnel from Central Park Killer, which is the location where the preceding bird has just overflown the landing zone. He has no interest in the overall mission of the ridiculous team, or whatever may happen to these other men. He works alone. He grins in anticipation.
    But now his dream compresses and he does not have to ride in the noisy bird and feel the sickening descent down or hear the awful noise or the frightening time when he must drop off the skid and slam through the air his hundreds of pounds hurtling down to crush his already-sore ankle and he has no memories of dropping into the LZ or the bird hovering then lifting as the team disperses into the jungle.
    He is moving deeper into his dream, and the dream takes him into another night and another ambush, and it is daytime and this is one of the favorite dreams—he has one of his best ambush dreams—and white humming lines hypnotically take him deep into his cozy and familiar jungle.
    He is dreaming of a lovely moment, a killing of two humans in the jungles of Vietnam. It is a mission like all the other missions; he participates only for the night patrols. Ignoring all the rest of it. He walks drag so that no carelessness can harm him. He always remembers to close the back door, to look both ways before crossing the street, to walk softly and carry a big stick
    They have just crossed a field and he has walked slowly, letting the others blunder ahead, hoping some of them will be killed. They seem foolish to him and he cannot admire their soldiering. It is pleasantly warm and he enjoys the feel of the hot sun as he slowly crosses the field and soon finds himself in jungle. Big trees just like he hoped for. He communicates with trees, actually holds intelligent conversations with them, and he will ask these trees for information.
    The openings between some of the trees are very narrow and he realizes how he can use this later. Vines make movement more difficult, impeding it completely in some places. There are thickets, thorn bushes, all kinds of impenetrable jungle come out around the path he follows, the route where the others have gone now a wet, oozing slime of bootprints.
    Water! Water and a trail have only one meaning. Ambush. He can smell little people everywhere. The main pathway goes off to the left but he can hear and smell the water to the right and he follows the scent. There is a creekbed under a protective arch of tree limbs that form a roof of sorts, having grown out from either side of the narrow stream of water, making a perfect green tunnel.
    The word AMBUSH screams at him again. His skin prickles in pleasure and anticipation. He knows he can wait here and kill some of the little people. He sees nothing in terms of our side/enemy or North/South. He kills ARVN and Cong alike since in truth there is often no way to separate the two. Such distinctions don't concern him anyway. He hungers for an ambush of the little ones that the others call dinks and gooks and slopes. He hungers for their life source, lusting for bloodspill. This is the dream of the dreaming monster.
    He does not exist, of course. They will promise you that and look you directly in the eye. His profession as been phased out, obsolete, they will assure you, long extinct like the cretaceous iguanodont, a profession made superfluous they'll tell you, rendered nonexistent like vaudeville, a bygone artifact like three-cent stamps and Davy Crockett caps. There is no much animal as a professional assassin. In Russia, maybe. But not here.
    And so each time we learn of a professional assassin we are told he was that one exception to