WITH TWO COBRA​ gunships leading the way, Chief Warrant Officer Elroy rendezvoused with Second Recon at LZ Juliet Six. It was the alternative pickup zone and it was getting chewed to shit from NVA mortars until the Cobras began to lay down suppressor fire. Things on the ground had been hairy for the marines for some time. Three days previously they had blown cover and had since been experiencing something like an ongoing Chinese gangfuck thirty klicks into Cambodia. The NVA was on them like stink on shit, and if it hadn’t been for the monsoons, they would have been dead on the first day. Charles had the team surrounded and was sweeping the area with tracking dogs. Fortunately the heavy rains that delayed the rescue effort also washed away the smell of the Americans. When the weather finally broke, Officer Elroy received last-minute orders to abort the mission. Headquarters maintained that radio contact had been lost and the marines were presumed dead. Elroy wasn’t so sure. When the team first called for a dustoff chopper, he had been committed to go in; and no matter what the high command thought, there was no way the Americans could sneak out fast enough for Charles not to know that they had crossed the border in the first place. What pushed the flight commander forward was the fact that he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he had left these grunts to hang out to dry. Yet he could only take this line of reasoning so far. I could see by the look on his face that Elroy was thanking his lucky stars that he was not a member of our insert team. We were packed in the back of the overloaded Huey like so many killer sardines with bad attitudes and a whole lot of personal firepower. Felix T., our own radio man and the tallest soldier in-country, pulled out his .45 as the orders to abort came through. Team Break on Through was no more going to allow him to abandon Second Recon than Elroy would have done himself. It was a crass move; Elroy’s courage was well known and Felix had been a cowboy from day one. His mind was locked and loaded in the gung-ho mode; jammed up on amphetamines and pulling out a sidearm was a bad idea, but we all knew what he was thinking. While it was a mind fuck of an order, what we heard over the radio surprised no one. Unlike the grunts in the army, with superior logistical support and better equipment, marines were marines. We weren’t used to hot meals, adequate gear, or being treated very well in the first place, but we were cranked up and ready to engage.