“It’s clear, sir, and you ain’t gonna believe it. There’s bodies everywhere. . . .”

“Where’s that fucking—Corpsman! Get up here now!”

“. . . must be at least ten of ’em. He got ’em all!”

“Has anybody seen Pruett?”

He felt hands on his shoulders, ripping at his shirt, blotting away the blood that ran warm down his chest and arm. “Somebody’s coming, sir.”

“Identify yourself!”

“Hey, it’s Pruett. Look, it’s Pruett!”

The name snapped Stiles alert. He shoved past the medic and stood dizzily, leaning on his rifle to stand beside the lieutenant and peer into the gloom of the rain forest. It was true. Jimmy Lee Pruett was picking his way through the dense overgrowth, a drab shadow set apart from the jungle by the crisscrossing bandoliers across his ponchoed chest. He waved with his shotgun as he approached. The other man waved too.

Stiles struggled to clear his throat. “Who’s that other guy with him?”

Everyone stared at him. “What other guy? Ain’t nobody there but Pruett.”

Oh, Lord. Oh, no.

“Shoot!” Alex yelled from in front of Pruett. “Shoot, dammit!”

“I—”

“SHOOT!”

He brushed drunkenly past the others and they didn’t see his raised M16 until he started to fire in controlled three-shot bursts as before. Pruett jerked up onto his toes. His dance lasted only a second or so but its twitching choreography was sickening to watch. But watch they did, in stunned silence until the rifle went dead and Stiles began to fumble for a second clip.

Someone hit him from behind then, just below the ear, and the forest seemed to burst into fluorescent color before his eyes. The weight of his attacker pressed him down into the mud as blow after blow rained down until he could no longer feel them. “You psycho sonuvabitch!” Briscoe cursed him, over and over. “He’s one of us! He’s one of us!”

It took three to wrestle him off, though Stiles couldn’t have known. There was just a whirlpool of voices around him, and even the pain began to subside as he slipped further and further into unconsciousness. But there was suddenly something dragging him back; a voice saying his name, a familiar voice. The lieutenant.

He looked up painfully to find he was sitting up now, propped against a tree trunk. He was surrounded by a wall of men, each wearing a pensive but suspicious look. The lieutenant was right in front of him, holding something in his hand. Pruett’s shotgun. “How did you know?” he was saying, his eyes unable to mask his own suspicion. His own fear. “How did you know it wasn’t Pruett? How?”