for his own guys, but a lot of them hung back. Delta two-two didn’t hang back. Clemson was there, and Wollensky, and Hackermeyer, and it was amazing how he could remember their names; their names and the smell of that day. The smell of the green and the smell of the kerosene. The sight of the sky, blue on green, and oh man how they would shoot, how those little fuckers would shoot, you never forgot how they would shoot or the feel of a round passing close beside you, and Malenfant was screaming Shoot me,ya deadass ringmeats!
Can’t! Fuckin blind! Come on, I’m right here! Fuckin blindeye homo slopehead assholes, I’m right here! And the men in the downed helicopters were screaming, so they pulled them out, got the foam on the fire and pulled them out, only they weren’t men anymore, not what you’d call men, they were screaming TV dinners for the most part, TV dinners with eyes and belt-buckles and these clittery reaching fingers with smoke rising from the melted nails, yeah, like that, not stuff you could tell people like Dr Conroy, how when you pulled them parts of them came off, kind of slid off the way the baked skin of a freshly cooked turkey will slide along the hot liquefied fat just beneath, like that, and all the time you’re smelling the green and the kerosene, it’s all happening, it’s a rilly rilly big shew, as Ed Sullivan used to say, and it’s all happening on our stage, and all you can do is roll with it, try to get over.
That was the morning, that was the helicopters, and something like that had to go somewhere. When they got to the shitty little Ville that afternoon they still had the stink of charred helicopter crewmembers in their noses, the old lieutenant was dead, and some of the men — Ronnie Malenfant and his friends, if you wanted to get right down to particulars —
had gone a little bughouse. Dieffenbaker was the new lieutenant, and all at once he had found himself in charge of crazy men who wanted to kill everyone they saw — children, old men, old mamasans in red Chinese sneakers.
The copters crashed at ten. At approximately two-oh-five, Ronnie Malenfant first stuck his bayonet into the old woman’s stomach and then announced his intention of cutting off the fuckin pig’s head. At approximately four-fifteen, less than four klicks away, the world blew up in John Sullivan’s face. That had been his big day in Dong Ha Province, his rilly big shew.
Standing there between two shacks at the head of the Ville’s single street, Dieffenbaker had looked like a scared sixteen-year-old kid. But he hadn’t been sixteen, he’d been twenty-five, years older than Sully and most of the others. The only other man there of Deef s age and rank was Willie Shearman, and Willie seemed reluctant to step in. Perhaps the rescue operation that morning had exhausted him. Or perhaps he had noticed that once again it was the Delta two-two boys who were leading the charge. Malenfant was screaming that when the fuckin slopehead Gong saw a few dozen heads up on sticks, they’d think twice about fucking with Delta Lightning. On and on in that shrill, drilling phone-salesman’s voice of his. The cardplayer. Mr Card-Shark. Pags had his harmonicas; Malenfant had his deck of fuckin Bikes. Hearts, that was Malenfant’s game. A dime a point if he could get it, nickel a point if he couldn’t. Come on, boys! he’d yell in that shrill voice of his, a voice Sully swore could cause nosebleeds and kill locusts on the wing. Come on, pony up, we huntin The Bitch!
Sully remembered standing in the street and looking at the new lieutenant’s pale, exhausted, confused face. He remembered thinking, He can’t do it. Whatever needs to be done to stop this before it really gets going, he can’t do it. But then Dieffenbaker got it together and gave Sly Slocum the nod. Slocum didn’t hesitate a moment. Slocum, standing there in the street beside an overturned kitchen chair with chrome legs and a red seat, had shouldered his rifle, sighted in, and had blown Ralph Glemson’s head clean off. Pagano, standing nearby and gaping at Malenfant, hardly seemed aware that he had been splattered pretty much from head to toe. Glemson fell dead in the street and that stopped the party.