“I wasn’t in my right mind,” Lett said, smiling again, “me and you both, I hear.”

The Marine glared. “You!”

Lett told himself not to resist. He stepped backward, out into the open ground, and kept his arms fixed to his sides. Let the Marine have his do.

The Marine lunged. Lett flinched, closed his eyes.

The Marine hugged him, patted him on the shoulders, and took a step back to have a good look at him. “I should thank you. You saved me from my own self. Who knows what I woulda done?”

“Really?”

“Why, sure.” The Marine grinned. “Hey, come off it, why the sour puss? We’re all right.”

“We are?”

“We’re just gung-ho, me and you. My name’s Jock, Jock Quinn. Sure we are. Tell you what—after this duty, you buy me a drink, looks like you’re the one could need one or four. You like rum? They got the good stuff here from the Philippines.”

The pickup bed was staked like a fence but had a canvas pulled over it, which, Lett had to concede, did not seem to serve any purpose on a clear and fair island day other than to conceal them. The six of them climbed up and in, ready to ride on plank benches. Jock Quinn planted himself next to Lett and kept grinning and shaking his head at Lett as if he’d just discovered they were from the same hometown. The truck pulled out, the canvas top flapping in their ears, their shoulders banging into each other’s, the foul blue exhaust peppering their nostrils as they stared into battered floorboards stained through with dried mud. Lett could have been riding into any meat grinder from Normandy to the Ardennes, one of those rare short hops to the next red-hot situation. It could have been the very morning that Captain Selfer of Military Intelligence had sent them over the enemy lines with no hope in hell let alone a whisper of a prayer. When they first rolled away, the gears grinding and the springs clanging along the jagged roadway, Lett had squeezed his eyes shut, ready to lower his head between his knees. But, then, miles passed and nothing happened. He could breathe. He could perceive his actual surroundings. He could gauge how much time had elapsed exactly, having counted off the seconds and then minutes in his head, and then confirming it by checking his watch.

The current circumstances could’ve triggered one of his episodes, plainly. This disguised truck, having to face Jock, the jostling ride—something should’ve gotten his leg twitching at the very least. But Selfer had also gotten the okay from Lansdale to put him back on his regular shots. Selfer had even given him a handy little travel pouch with vials of the stuff that he could inject himself, so Lett had poked himself in the latrine before reporting to the truck.