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at the base of the mahogany tree where the roots entered the ground.
     He carried the skull over to the split roots and shoved it between two of them on the ground.
    “Hand me that piece of cardboard over there.” He pointed to a piece of waxed cardboard and the lance corporal handed it to
     him. The NCO folded a crease in the square pressed paper and shoved it in the damp earth in front of the skull. “There … now
     you can’t see it. Is that better?”
    The corporal nodded his head in agreement.
    “We’ll take it with us in the morning. I want to have the mortician back at the morgue in Da Nang make some impressions from
     its teeth and maybe we can locate an MIA soldier or Marine for a family back home.” The NCO frowned over the task. “Make sure
     we don’t forget it in the morning!”
    “Check, Gunny. I’ll remind you…” The Marine lance corporal felt another chill and laid his M-14 across his legs. It was going
     to be a long night.
    The skull looked blankly at the piece of waxed cardboard through its eye cavities. There used to be a functioning brain inside
     the empty cranium. If the brain could have had a second chance, it probably would have advised Private First Class Daryl Masters
     not to get into the speedboat with the Army Criminal Investigations Division’s sergeant and the NCO yardmaster. No, the brain
     would have warned him that they were not to be trusted, but his survival instincts hadn’t yet been fine tuned enough to detect
     that; he had been in Vietnam only a couple of weeks. His friend David Woods had sensed something was wrong and stayed out
     of it. Woods had refused to go with him to the CID office and report the black marketeering operation going on at the docks,
     and he was still alive.
    The monsoon hit the Marine detachment with the fury of a hurricane. The rain blocked out everything a foot in front of the
     guards, and hearing was totally prevented by the sound of the water. Millions of tons of water fell from the sky on the jungle
     below. Anything that had not been placed inside the AMTRACKS was instantly soaked through. The guards huddled under the makeshift
     poncho shelters that were ineffective against the storm and waited for it to pass.
    As quickly as it had appeared, the monsoon was gone. Water still poured from the leaves of the trees, but the heavy rain was
     over.
    “Let’s get loaded up and out of here!” The infantry sergeant waved for the guards to break the perimeter. “That fucking water
     is going to raise the levels of the streams and I want to get the fuck away from here before that happens! MOVE IT!”
    The men rushed to obey; none of them had liked the idea of being so close to the border with only a few men. There had been
     rumors that
battalions
of North Vietnamese soldiers patrolled the jungle next to the Laotian border, and every one of the Marines knew that they
     had left the protective cover of their artillery.
    “Come on!” The infantry sergeant passed the Marine engineer and slapped him on his rear. “MOVE YOUR ASS!”
    The first RPG-7 impacted the side of the AMTRACK at exactly the same instant the NCO’s hand had touched the lance corporal’s
     buttock.
    A single M-14 started firing and then a light machine gun joined it. The air was filled with the sound of exploding RPGs—rifle-propelled
     grenades—and AK-47s. The Marines fought hard and formed a small perimeter on the east side of the lager site. All of their
     AMTRACKs were burning. One of the fighting vehicles on the edge of the perimeter exploded, sending up a column of fire. A
     burning body that no one saw was thrown clear of the vehicle.
    The gunnery sergeant fired his M-14 expertly, without any sign of panicking; he located a camouflaged target, aimed, and fired.
     He was taking a large total of NVA soldiers. He reloaded a magazine, looked around the area for wounded Marines, and saw his
     lance corporal attaching his bayonet to the stud on his weapon. The sergeant