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down next to it and begins flapping madly, with his gun at his side.
    Angels with guns. That seems kind of right to me.
    I throw myself down on the other side of Hunter’s angel and flap away with my arms and legs until I believe I have made a proper impression.
    I hop up. Squid keeps pumping, like he wants toindent himself deep enough for the folks at home to see it in the other side of the world.
    â€œWhat about you guys?” Hunter says to Gillespie and Marquette.
    â€œI don’t think so,” Gillespie says. “A Marine in a war zone lying on his back out in the wide open doesn’t sound like the sanest proposition.”
    That appears to have persuaded Marquette, who seems to want to declare the war over right now all by himself. He falls into line with the others, makes his impression, then he and Squid push up off the sand, trying not to disturb their work.
    â€œArggh,” Marquette barks, turning awkwardly and contorting his shoulder as he falls sideways.
    Hunter helps him up, and it’s obvious that he’s done some damage to his shoulder. Gillespie laughs, a little low and cruel. Enough to get his message across. Then he leads the march back toward camp.
    Squid follows, then Marquette pretending hard not to be favoring his other shoulder, then Hunter. I linger a few ticks, admiring our sand work. I feel something good about our armed angels, about leaving our mark on the Chu Lai beach.
    And the fact that Marquette actually injured himself in this dangerous operation doesn’t hurt, either.

G entlemen, we got work to do,” says Cpl. Cherry.
    It is first thing in the morning, which is not quite as first thing as first thing used to be. It seems every week we are allowed to sleep in a little later if we feel like it, and if the heat lets us, and if the insects don’t become such whining, buzzing little alarm clocks that staying in bed is no treat at all.
    â€œWhat kind of work?” asks Hunter, up on his elbows on his bunk. “I hope it’s not another … hold on, did you say we ?”
    â€œYes I did, and what’s wrong with that?”
    One by one the guys are rising on their bunks, like a pod of prairie dogs with a coyote on the horizon.
    â€œNothing’s wrong with it, exactly. It’s just that you don’t seem all that interested in going out on patrols much.”
    â€œWell maybe that’s because we don’t go out on sure-thing search and destroys much.”
    â€œWhat?” Gillespie says, hopping right up and jumping just about straight into his pants.
    â€œThat’s right, kids: Search. And. Destroy. The kind of mission the big guys get.”
    And just like that, the whole hooch is transformed. We were a whole lot more House of Reptiles before the news, like a bunch of lizards basking on hot rocks. Now, it’s the House of Speed, everybody dressing, pulling on gear, arming up.
    â€œStop that,” Hunter says, slapping my deodorant out of my hand. “Who do you need to smell pretty for anyway?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I say. “You? To be honest, you’ve all been starting to get pretty rank smelling around here.”
    â€œWell if you don’t want to get pretty dead smelling, you better leave that deodorant right out of the equation. Charlie can smell that from a mile away.”
    I turn to Cpl. Cherry, who is still standing in the doorway like he’s in charge of supervising dress-up time.
    â€œIt’s true, Cabbage,” he says. “And you better hope your soap isn’t too perfumey, either. The hunter becomes the prey pretty quickly in this jungle.”
    â€œHey!” yells Hunter.
    Everybody is laughing now.
    It’s weird. I realize this. We’re as happy as a bunch of school kids on a field-trip day. Morale, which issomething we hear discussed a great deal lately, seems to have been repaired with that one phrase: search and destroy .
    It is a whole different