I find an enemy kia and I take his weapon, an m-79 grenade launcher. I stumble on, looking for a target.

A Charlie-Charlie, a command chopper, blasts sand into a cloud that obscures the battle. Flat round winnowing baskets fly through the air like bronze coins. The chopper looms in the sky directly above me, hovering so close I can almost reach out and touch it, if I could lift my arms. Squinting into the tornado of prop wash I see stenciled across the belly of the chopper: a white skull and YOU HAVE JUST BEEN KILLED COURTESY OF THE 107TH ARMORED CAVALRY--THE BUCKEYE BOYS--GHOST RIDERS IN THE SKY.

The Charlie-Charlie rolls away, a bird of prey looking for enemy gooks to kill, and I use all of my strength to lift the M-79 grenade launcher.

I fire. Bloop. It is the first time in over a hundred years that a member of my family has fired upon federal troops.

The blooper grenade blows off the chopper's tail rotor and the Charlie-Charlie drops, crashing down into a hooch.

As the Charlie-Charlie goes down, I faint.

The next thing I know, I'm crawling on my hands and knees, looking for another weapon. The blooper holds only one round and I forgot to get any ammunition.

I see an Arvin officer wringing the neck of the Woodcutter's little red and gold rooster. The Arvin inserts the chicken's head under his belt. As the Arvin walks away the dead chicken bounces against his thigh.

Army snuffies who don't look old enough to ride a bicycle are on an important resource-denial mission. They stand on line and piss on patched gunnysacks full of rice they have dragged out of tunnels with meat hooks.

I see five Arvin puppet armymen hiding behind a booch. The Arvins are putting battle dressings onto themselves so that they can be medevaced out of the fighting.

Bo Doi Bac Si has been captured by Army grunts. A red-faced potbellied Top Sergeant is hitting Bo Doi Bac Si upside his head. Bo Doi Bac Si does not flinch, but glares back in defiance, holds his head high, and every time they ask him a question, he spits. They hit him in the mouth. He spits blood at them.

I call out to Bo Doi Bac Si, but my words get lost somewhere in the air inside my chest.

Arvin puppet troops wander casually through the horror circus like Huckleberry Finns playing hooky from school and looking for a place to fish.

They've hanged Song. With a strand of barbed wire they've hanged Song from the giant banana tree. Her neck is broken. Her tongue protrudes from her mouth, black and grotesque.

Three baby-faced kids in olive-drab green stand on the hood of the old French armored car and poke at Song's bruised thighs with the barrels of their M-16s. If not for the war these guys would still be standing outside some small-town pool hall saying, "Aw, my ass," to each other just loud enough to be overheard by passing high school girls.

The baby-faced grunts laugh wildly as one of them takes out his shiny chrome Zippo lighter and sets fire to Song's pubic hair. Her body twitches, her fingers flutter. The kids laugh. "She's got ghosts in her!"

I should feel sad, but I don't. I don't feel anything. All I can think about is that I wish my face didn't hurt so much, and I think that if I'm going to die, why can't I just fucking die and be done with it. Why do I have to do all of this bleeding and see this Mickey Mouse murder exhibition?

I try to take one more step, just one more step. But I don't. I collapse. I lie on my back on the ground and I wait for the great shadow to move across my face.

A cheerful medic in a skuzzy boonie hat kneels down and whips out a morphine Syrette. The medic slaps the crook of my arm to find a vein. He tries to give me an injection of morphine. But his hand is shaking so hard he can't get the needle in. I reach over and hold his arm steady while he gives me the shot. I say, "Cancel the ambulance. I think it's only a hard-on."

The little medic laughs.

As I start turning into white rubber, the medic puts Band-Aids on my wounds. This strikes me as a little odd.

Somebody says, "L-T, Mortar Magnet is playing medic again." The voice shoves Mortar Magnet away from me and says, "Shit. Get away from that man, head case."

Another voice says, "Mortar Magnet, you are hereby transferred to the military police."

"Yes, L-T. "

"Arrest yourself. Get your crazy ass over to that little hooch and help rig that Chi-Com gear for demo."

"Yes, L-T. "

A big black medic with an easy grin pats me on the shoulder and says, "Be cool, m'man. You are safe and sound. It been some cold shit being held prisoner by these Charlie Congs, but you with righteous American dudes now. We here to help you. We been humping all over this A-O looking for you. Birds are inbound. You be out of this ville on a dustoff quicker than a gook can shit rice."

A voice says, "Move it, people."

A skinhead Lieutenant leans down and looks at my face. He's a pudgy little guy, another wild-eyed butter-bar bucking for tracks. His hair is red and cut high and tight. The Lieutenant says, "Is that him?"

"Shit, L-T," says the black medic, "I guess it must be him!"

Scattered small-arms fire erupts somewhere far away. Commander Be Dan and the fighters must have hit a blocking force.

I cough. I spit up some vomit. I look at it to make sure it's nothing worse than vomit.

The Army Lieutenant's face comes down, a freckled white balloon blotting out the sun. "Hang tough, trooper," he says. "Don't sweat the small shit. We'll get the gooks for you. Payback is a motherfucker. Just don't you worry." He pats my arm. "You're what this is all about."

I must be giving the Army Lieutenant a funny look because he savs, "Bird Dog overflight spotted you in a rice paddy. One round-eye on the ground. The Word came down. Extract all friendly personnel. Then kill everybody and let God sort them out."

"Sir?"

"Yes?"

"I'm not a fucking soldier."

The Lieutenant's face does not change expression. "What? What did you say?"

"I'm not a fucking Army puke. I'm a United States Marine. Retired." I clear my throat with a grunt. "Davis, James T., Private E-1, serial number 2306777." I take a deep breath and say in Vietnamese: "Do Me Hoa Chanh." Then in English: "I don't surrender. Fuck you."

A grunt walks by with a severed head tied by the hair to the barrel of his M-16. It's one of the Phuong twins.

The Lieutenant looks at me without changing his expression. He says to the black medic, "Get him onto a dustoff, Doc. "

A radioman appears. The radioman is wearing a big floppy straw hat. He says, "L-T, you want gunships? And the Sergeant Major wants you ASAP. He says he's got a mutiny situation in Third Platoon."

Still looking at me, the Lieutenant says, "Negative gunships. Roger the Sergeant Major." He suddenly turns away and shouts: "Police up that gear, trooper. Corporal, where is that personnel damage assessment? Get me a body count of these Oriental human beings. And have some of your people check out those enemy structures, then blow them."

The Lieutenant walks away, saying to somebody, "That's affirmative. Put your ordnance over there."

Soldiers are pulling muddy weapons and military equipment out of tunnels. An angry grunt with a red face is furiously bayoneting a bamboo canteen, grunting with satisfaction after each vicious thrust.

I'm lifted up and carried through a cloud of grape smoke and into a storm of stinging sand thrown up the prop wash of inbound medevac choppers.

I'm put down with the wounded who are waiting to be onloaded. The medics are slashing gear from the wounded with knives. The medics cut off my black pajamas. They leave me naked, but I'm allowed to keep my beat-up old Stetson.

Being wounded makes us invisible. The soldiers burning the village with torches of bamboo and straw look right through us like we're already ghosts. You're no longer a part of what's going on. You feel out of place. You wonder what's going to happen to you. Where are you going, you ask, and will it hurt? You don't like sick people and you certainly don't want to be left behind with strangers.

Medevac choppers set down, and hacking blades like motorized machetes blast pinpoints of shrapnel. The choppers load the litter cases first: head wounds, VSIs--Very Seriously Injured--and Expectants. A chopper lifts off and the down-draft from the blurred rotor blades catches blood pouring from the open belly door and prop wash splatters the litter bearers on the ground with pink mist.

Some Army grunts stroll by like they're on their way to a picnic at the beach. The soldiers laugh too loud and talk too loud. Two of the soldiers have a grip on Bo Doi Bac Si's ankles. They are dragging him away for the body count. Somebody has nailed a unit insignia patch to his forehead. A bonybrown puppy lopes along beside the body, nudging in to lick blood off of Bo Doi Bac Si's face.

A friendly medic kneels down and spreads Xylocaine ointment over my face and hands. The sun is in my eye, so I can't see him. I say, "Thanks, pal." After a few moments my face and hands get numb and go away for a little trip.

I turn my head to starboard. For ten yards, in perfectly aligned rank and file, in formation even in death, lumpy body bags full of soldiers wait with flawless patience.

I roll to port toward the sound of muted moans. Somebody has made a mistake. The only medevac priority lower than a dead American is a gutshot Vietnamese woman. Some New Guy medic who didn't know any better has brought the Fighter-Widow, the mother of B-Nam Hai, and has left her with the wounded on a bed of bloody battle dressings, thinking she'll be medevaced.

B-Nam Hai is not to be seen, but a bawling baby who is only just learning to walk waddles up to the Fighter-Widow, plops down next to her, and holds the dying woman's hand.

A skinny soldier with a freshly shaved bald head and with fat red and white battle dressings tied to both of his legs is shoving his right index finger in and out of an exit wound in the Fighter-Widow's stomach. The Fighter-Widow whimpers and whines, but not loud. There is the metallic odor of fresh blood.

Somebody laughs. A middle-aged man with eyebrows as black as raven's wings and a dimpled chin sits up. The man has combed his black hair across his head in an attempt to hide his bald spot. He looks like my high school football coach. But he doesn't look wounded, and he's got all of his gear with him.

The Coach says, "You retarded West Texas cracker son of a bitch. Murphy, I'm glad they got you, boy. I'm glad they did it to you. Your body count is a standing joke. I always said you couldn't walk point for shit." The Coach burps and feels his chest.

Murphy with the grayish-white bald head says, "Aw, leave me alone, Sarge. I'm finger-fucking a gook."

Someone laughs, but not the Coach. The Coach is falling back, spitting blood.

A passing medic dips down to the Coach for an instant and then walks on. The medic jerks a thumb over his shoulder and says to the litter bearers, "Tag him and bag him."

Somewhere someone screams, long and horrible, and you think: That could not possibly be a human being, and the litter bearers who are loading the wounded stand still and listen. And you can see that one of the litter bearers, a short potbellied guy loaded down with ammunition bandoliers stuffed full of battle dressings, is wetting his pants but doesn't know it yet. He listens to the scream and has a look on his face like a punji stake just pierced his foot.

A Mexican guy with a big Zapata mustache and a red M marked on his forehead with a laundry pencil to show that he's had morphine, rocks back and forth while his chubby round face with its square white teeth tells everybody in Mexican his newly devised deadly program of revenge because the gooks have wasted all of his friends. The medics have tied the Mexican up with rope. Between his Spanish threats he chants, rocking back and forth against the rope, "Payback is a motherfucker. Payback is a motherfucker."

As they load me onto the cavernous belly of a vibrating machine I see soldiers hammering steel rods into the ground to find tunnels for the tunnel rats. The tunnel rats are expert miners who dig for things that are where they do not belong.

The sun is going down but somewhere they've dropped a Willy Peter grenade into a tunnel and the village is lit up by white and yellow flashes of secondary explosions. The sympathetic detonations sound like a trainload of ammunition cooking off.

Army medics lift a wounded man into the chopper and lay him down next to me, talking to him all the time to reassure him, touching him gently so that he won't feel alone, but you see the look in their eyes and the look in their eyes has already pronounced him dead.

After the last of the medics have loaded the last of the body bags like very heavy laundry the medics hop off the cargo door and run into the hiss of the turbines, bent low to avoid the blurred rotor blades, turning their faces away from the sting of the prop wash.

I'm floating in a morphine haze, zoned out, and the scene that I'm a part of is moving slower and slower and at any moment will freeze and stop.

I lean back against the belly of the Chinook cargo helicopter, packed in tight among a full load of dead and wounded soldiers. It's like being inside the belly of a green aluminum whale. I cling to the red nylon webbing on the walls.

The wind howls in through the open cargo door. The wind must be freezing, but I feel warm.

As I sink into a warm sleep an Army medic sitting facing me talks into a field radio handset. He reads out the names and serial numbers of casualties. Somewhere far away, in a nice quiet office, some candy-assed pogue is already turning the sticky red blood into clean white paperwork so that it can be filed and forgotten.

The medic's voice is a flat monotone: "Ah, I say again, ah, be advised that's fourteen, I say again one four-Kilo India Alpha, and thirty-nine, that's three-niner, ah, say again, over. Negative on your last interrogatory. I say again, three-niner Whiskey India Alpha. And one round-eyed P.O.W., that's Papa, Oscar, Whiskey, with multiple lacerations . . ."

The singsong rhythm of the medic's voice is soothing as he continues, chewing gum as he talks, submitting his data, ending with: "Multiple gunshot wounds to the lower abdomen . . . traumatic amputation of right leg below the knee. That's a rog on your last. Negative further. Out."

On the other side of the darkness I walk into the Alabama in my mind. I walk across a plowed, sun-baked cornfield after a rain, looking for Indian weapons made out of flint.

Fwop, fwop, fwop, and we are leaving the earth behind and it's dark outside and on the other side of the darkness I'm dreaming and I'm not unhappy, because I know that what goes around comes around and what's coming down is already on the way. The Nguyen brothers and the surviving Phuong twin and Ba Can Bo and the Woodcutter and Battle Mouth and Commander Be Dan and the people of Hoa Binh will march out of the jungle to fight again, because this is their land and we're on it.

I float in warm sleep and memories, and I am happy to know that before dawn the Woodcutter and Commander Be Dan will be back in the village, posting sentries, caring for the wounded, and burying the dead. Now the dead can sleep, forever bonded to the living, in sacred soil made rich and fertile by the blood and the bones of their ancestors.

The Woodcutter and Commander Be Dan will take care of business. Then, together, they will go looking for Song.

The medevae chopper rumbles through the night air like a flying boxcar. The wind feels good, cool and clean. Above the pounding of the rotor blades we can hear small-arms fire, far below.

We pass other choppers and somebody turns on a light. In the rolling belly of the dustoff the wounded cling to one another in the dark, bathed in the faint red glow of collision-avoidance lights.

Outbound from a cold LZ we look out of the open cargo door at the stars, killer children with bloody brown faces. Our faces are coated with a film of sweat, dirt, and smoke. We're all half-naked, our pants and boots cut off by the medics, big white emergency medical tags attached to our utility jackets, crude red Ms grease-penciled onto our foreheads. We are a tired, raggedy-assed bunch of dying grunts wrapped in muddy ponchos and shot all to shit.

We squint but do not flinch when cold wind blasts in bard through the open cargo door and whips our dirty compress bandages into our faces and fires cold drops of blood through the air like bullets.

The chopper bits a downdraft and sudden suction from the slipstream pulls with power at the flopping white battle dressings and some of the bloody bandages are sucked out through the open cargo door and we leave a trail of little ghosts flying behind us in the sky.