Then they were in the wrong place. There were no men there, just women and children and elders, and no place around there for men to hide except a bamboo stand and down a ways under the bridge. Just rice paddies. “Where are the men?” Thomas asked the people who were there. The others looked around. Their plans of action were never perfect, but this was too far less than perfect. There were no Cong there, not that he could see or feel, and not even any weapons that they could count, and everyone was scared and crying. It was the wrong place. Thomas felt it all along. They’d fixed it as an enemy camp and instead they found scared faces and no northern dialects. He knew the dialects. Now they were gods if they wanted to be. They were deciding gods over all the innocent people, the mothers covering their children, the crying, the ones staring down, waiting for what came next. His men were the ones who decided life or death.

“Oh yeah!” said Murph. “Look at that girl.” He walked toward a young girl.

Someone else began to light a fire to the “hootch,” which was really a temporary building the people had made of found items.

“Stop!” Thomas yelled. “There’s no one here.”

“Hey, you know you can’t even trust a baby.”

Everything happened too quickly and then when he fired that day, no one fired back. They just looked at him. He can still see the surprised look in their eyes, Murphy after the girl. He was surprised, too. He didn’t think he could do something that fast, that unable to be changed, restored. Or did he just think they were surprised because it had all happened and there was no decision to it? Everything there always happened too quick or too slow. There was no normal time in war. And having that finger on a rifle or an automatic—it was all too easy. Then he recalled the dirty faces of the men, the helmet under which he sweated. Sweat. They could smell each other, the fear on each other. He hadn’t believed you could smell fear. You could smell it, a stench strong as anything else created by bodies.

Thomas pushed Mike to safety, Mike, the fucking new guy, they called him, who watched everything wide-eyed and in shock, but he hadn’t even worn a helmet, just an olive drab scarf of torn cloth like he’d seen some bad war movie and Thomas saw his head hit something. Afterward Thomas never forgot him. Mike disappeared. Thomas saw only the afterimage of his blue eyes, light blue, frightened. Maybe he ran. Probably he died out there because there was fire all down the hill, even the water of the rice paddies seemed to be on fire and the river was burning.

Then the Americans dropped down and searched for them. They found the bodies, what was left of them, and found Monster’s dog tags with all the rest and found a deserted, burned village.