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the big gun, then Doc, then, at the rear, Spec Four Paul Berlin, whose each step was an event of imagination.
    For two days they had moved through simple jungle. Cacciato had escaped—a trap sprung on a small grassy hill, flares in the dawnsky, but the trap was empty. A few empty ration cans, some Hershey bar wrappers, Cacciato’s dog tags. That was all. So, regrouping, they pressed on. They crossed the last mountains. They followed the lone clay trail as it slowly descended, narrowed, twisted westward into the jungle.
    And now it continued. They marched steadily, stopping only for water or to cut vines or to give the lieutenant time to rest.
    In the early afternoon, when the heat became impossible, they stopped along a shallow creek that ran parallel to the trail. They drank, filled their canteens, then removed their boots and lay back with their feet in the stream. No one spoke. Paul Berlin closed his eyes, thinking it would be nice to have a cold Coke, or a tray of ice from the freezer, or an orange, or … He told himself to cut it out. He sat up, checked his feet for blisters, then rinsed out his socks.
    “Another klick,” Doc said. He spoke softly, showing the map to the lieutenant. “Where these elevation lines drop … these little lines here? That’s Laos. One more klick.”
    The lieutenant nodded. He was on his back, looking up at where the trees opened to a sliver of sky. He looked dazed.
    “Then what, sir? At the border?”
    Sighing, the old man closed his eyes. He lay still a long time.
    “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I don’t. That’s one bridge we might’ve already crossed.”
    “Turn back,” Harold Murphy said. He leaned against his machine gun, left hand absently tapping the barrel. For a big man his voice was very high. “The border, that’s where we turn back. Right, sir?”
    Lieutenant Corson did not answer. His face flushed. The cheekbones looked as if they had once been broken and had never mended properly, too high and knobby.
    “Isn’t that right, sir?” Murphy said. “I mean—you know—we can’t cross the border, can we? That’s—” He let it trail off.
    “Desertion,” the lieutenant said. “That’s what it is. It’s desertion.”
    “I tell you this,” Harold Murphy said. “I don’t like it. I say we turn our butts back right now. Let him go.”
    Stink laughed.
    “I just don’t like it.”
    They rested another ten minutes. Then, without speaking, the lieutenant got up, put on his rucksack and helmet, and motioned them forward.
    The jungle kept thickening. All afternoon the squad plodded through banyan and neem trees, and trees they couldn’t name, vines and deep brush, soft country. They trudged along slowly, painfully, stopping often while Stink or Eddie went to work with a machete. Hacking, sometimes crawling. Once, late in the afternoon, the trail gave out entirely. It simply ended. Taking turns, they chopped through blunt jungle for nearly an hour. It was hard, awkward work. The machete handle turned slick. There was no room for leverage or full swinging at the tangled thickets, and the air was heavy with a kind of heat Paul Berlin had never known before. He measured his breathing: inhaling, holding it for two counts, swinging the machete and exhaling at the same time, pausing, inhaling, holding it, swinging. Twenty strokes left him exhausted.
    Flopping down next to Oscar Johnson, he felt the sweat leaving his body as if through a tap.
    “Smoke ’em if you got ’em,” Oscar said softly. “Pooped?”
    Paul Berlin nodded. He wanted to smile, to show he was holding up. He watched silently as Eddie took up the machete and began hacking away at the jungle.
    “I’ll say one thing,” Oscar murmured. “Cacciato ain’t passed this way. Not through this shit.”
    “Think we lost him?”
    Oscar shrugged. “All I know’s what I see, an’ I see he ain’t been here. That’s all.” He glanced at the lieutenant. “And I know this, too. The old