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feeling very drowsy. The book slipped from his hand onto the floor.

    "What the hell are we going to do? What? What? What are we going to do?"
    Tyson lay in the village square between the dead radio operator and the dead squad leader. He turned

    34 * NELSON DEMILLE

    to the rifleman lying wounded beside him and replied, "We're going to die."
    Machine-gun fire raked the square, and rocketpropelled grenades burst among the living and the dead. Tyson had never heard or seen such sustained and heavy enemy fire and had never been in so exposed a position to fully appreciate how quickly a cohesive military unit could wither and die. He knew of no tactics that would extricate them from this massacre in the muddy square. One just had to wait one's turn to die, or stand up and get it over with.
    A rocket-propelled grenade landed in front of his face and splashed filthy water into his eyes. Tyson stared at it, half submerged in the brown puddle, realizing it was the last thing he'd ever see. But it did not explode, and he would learn later from other men who had stared that khaki egg-shaped death in the eye that many of those Russian-made grenades were faulty. Some unmotivated, vodka-soaked munitions worker in Volgograd had done something wrong, and Ben Tyson was alive for the time being.
    A bullet nicked his right ear, and he yelled out, more in surprise than in pain. He saw men stand and run, only to be cut down, and he wondered where they were running to because the fire was coming from all sides of the square. They were cut off from the rest of the company, and they hadn't the men or resources to break out. He prayed earnestly for a quick death and drew his .45 automatic as insurance against being taken alive.
    Then, as if God answered someone else's prayer, a bullet struck a smoke-signal canister hooked to the web belt of a dead man, ten meters to Tyson's front. Tyson watched as the red smoke billowed up slowly from the dead body as though the man were bleeding into a zero-gravity environment.
    Tyson tore a smoke canister from his own belt, pulled the pin, and rolled it a few feet away. The

    WORD OF HONOR * 35

    canister popped, disgorging a stream of green smoke into the heavy, fetid air. Smoke canisters began popping all over the square as the survivors of his platoon comprehended that there might be a way out. Vivid plumes of red, blue, yellow, orange, and green smoke rose from the killing zone.
    The enemy was temporarily blinded, and their fire lifted higher, as was natural in obscured conditions; they began cross-firing into each other's positions across the market square.
    Tyson reached out and pulled the radiophone from the stiffening fingers of the dead radioman. He steadied his voice and called Captain Browder.
    "Mustang Six, this is Mustang One-Six. We're backing out the same way we came in. Can you meet us halfway?"
    The radio crackled, and Browder's voice came on with that practiced cool of a man who was used to talking and ducking bullets at the same time. "Roger.
    We're heavily engaged at the momentstill at the edge of the village. But we'll try a linkup. That's your smoke, I guess."
    "Roger. Guide on that. We've got to leave the dead. "
    "Understand.
    "How about air and artillery?"
    "On the way. But don't wait for it. Get your asses moving. Papa's coming.
    Good luck, partner. "
    "Roger, over."
    "Roger, out. "
    Tyson rose to one knee and called out through the smoke and noise, "Pull back! Take the wounded and leave the dead and know the difference!"
    The first platoon of Alpha Company began their withdrawal across the mud-slick square. They crawled, ran, and stumbled back through the smoke-shrouded marketplace to the first line of huts that bordered the open area.
    They set the huts ablaze with incendiary grenades, threw the last of their 36 * NELSON DEMILLE

    smoke canisters, and tossed tear-gas grenades in their wake. They blasted away with M-16s, machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, and pistols, expending