Keeping Watch by Laurie R. King Page A

sighted down on an old man plowing a paddy with his water buffalo, just to see what it was like to play God. And sometimes, after particularly brutal days, he even began to understand those twin urges of domination, the fierce desire to cap mere killing with calculated savagery against the enemy, assaulting his women or hacking off parts of his corpse. Rape and mutilation were extreme versions of pissing on the enemy: If nothing else, they made crystal clear just which one had survived the battle.
    Three months in-country, and Allen’s eyes gazed on the world from the other side of a chasm. Whenever he shaved in his murky steel mirror, he concentrated on the cheeks and chin, because he knew that if he looked farther up, he would see that look the journalists liked to call the “thousand yard stare,” the expressionless face of an old, old man who no longer dares focus on anything close by. Allen concentrated on the face below the cheekbones, because a part of him did not want to acknowledge what he in fact was.
    A twenty-year-old cold-blooded killer.

    The calendar changed to 1968, and paradoxically, while Allen’s own tensions simplified and leveled out, the pressures on the country around him grew. While Allen learned to move quietly in the land he was coming to know, Charlie was growing more and more blatant. It was almost as if he could smell blood in the water, as the growing drag of antiwar sentiment at home made even the rawest recruit suspect that the U.S. wasn’t going to be in the country long enough to win. The Wolf took on a haunted look, and his determination that the men under his command would fight an honest war was grim now instead of dignified. Things happened even in Second Platoon that wouldn’t have earlier, blind eyes were turned on the unjustly dead. Someone told Allen that life would calm down once Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, started. He replied that he’d be more than ready for it.
    During a day inside the NDP, Allen was mending a ripped cargo pocket on his fatigues when he looked up to see Ricardo Flores, the whip of an antenna snapping back and forth over his head, bright green eyes sparkling in a grinning face. Allen dropped his clumsy needle to throw his arms around this figure from a past life and pound on the little guy’s tightly muscled back.
    â€œHey Flowers! Or do they still call you Lucy?”
    â€œDon’t know what I’m going to do when I go home and my mother calls me Ricky,” he admitted. “How you doin’, man?”
    â€œCounting the days, Lucy, just countin’ the days. What’re you doing here, anyway?”
    â€œThey had to do some shuffling at the regiment I was in, putting some platoons together, that kinda shit. We had two romeos, you guys were one down, so here I am.”
    In other words, his company had had such heavy losses, they shipped in an entire new platoon to fill their numbers.
    â€œIt’s great to see you. You with the Second Platoon, then?”
    â€œFirst.”
    â€œSecond’s better, Lieutenant Woolf’s better’n most of the generals.”
    â€œHell, Carmichael,
you’re
better’n most of the generals.”
    â€œTrue. Hey, I should tell you, Farmboy’s in your platoon. Remember him and Dogs? Dogs shipped out last month, lucky bastard, some kind of liver thing.”
    â€œYeah, I remember them, from the bus. So the farmboy made it this far—I’da thought he’d get hisself stomped by a water buffalo or something.”
    â€œNot yet. So where you been?”
    â€œAll over.” The green eyes took on a haunted look and shifted away, which meant that he didn’t want to talk about it. Fair enough.
    â€œWell,” said Allen, “anyway, welcome to Bravo Company. You need me to show you where your platoon is?”
    â€œNah, I got it. See you around, okay?” And Flores left Allen to his mending.
    Two days later, Tet began.
    But instead