Lett left that night. Lansdale had picked three others—but not Jock, who pulled a face like the kid not chosen for stickball. The four rode in the two empty heavy trucks that had been parked at the warehouse, two men to each cargo bed. They got a canvas cover, seat cushions, and an aluminum pot of coffee for their trouble. Lett should’ve felt the old warning signs convulsing him, riding as he was in the back of a truck to who knew where with poor bastards just as unsure as he. Carrying a weapon. Not having a clear identity or mission. And yet, he felt talkative. Maybe it was the beer or coffee or both. Maybe it was simply that stimulating effect of General Douglas MacArthur. Maybe it was that dose he’d done in the Quonset hut, forging steel inside him.

Lett’s opposite number in the back of the truck wasn’t feeling talkative, however, and only grunted in the affirmative when Lett asked him if he wanted some joe. The man was squat with big ears and hair everywhere, even on his sinewy neck. The coffee braced him just enough for questions. He was a former Navy commando who never returned to the States and didn’t see the point, considering. “I got the goddamn malaria, besides,” he told Lett, “keeps coming back.” Then he clammed up and turned away from Lett, treating him like a new replacement.

The truck ride, the cold shoulder, the imposed silence—it all finally brought a dark mood, becoming one with the night that was sucking all light from under the canvas. Lett lay on his back and stared at the canvas above, dark as pitch, cloaking what had to be a million stars up there, the road jostling him, working away at his back like a thousand hands poking and prodding and none of it like a massage. He was hugging his M1 carbine, he realized. He pushed it aside.

Keep moving. Stop and you’re cornered.

“Damn right there, doggie,” the commando replied from his dark corner, and Lett realized he’d been muttering to himself, out loud.