(“This” post was created in November of 2017. It’s now been updated, to include an excerpt from Scott Ely’s novel…)
Jackson walked across the compound toward the bunker line,
looking for a bunker that looked like the one he had just seen in the scope.
Suddenly mortar rounds started dropping.
Jackson dived into the nearest shelter, a recoilless rifle emplacement.
The firebase’s mortars and 105s replied.
“Hey, it’s fucking Alabama,” a soldier said.
“Hale kick you out of the TOC?” another soldier asked.
“I –“ Jackson began.
Rounds began to drop close to the emplacement and men scrambled for cover.
Jackson heard the shrapnel whistle overhead.
“Get the fuck out of here, Alabama!”, a soldier yelled.
“You’re drawing fire just like fucking Light.”
The firing had stopped and someone shoved Jackson out of the emplacement.
“Go get somebody else fucked,” a voice yelled after him.
Jackson ran for the radar bunker.
Alfred could still be all right.
Maybe it was the next incoming that was going to get him, Jackson thought.
But when Jackson reached the radar bunker,
he found the bunker had taken a direct hit which had collapsed the roof.
A group of soldiers were already trying to dig out Alfred’s body.
I don’t want to know this fucking shit before it happens, Jackson thought,
gasping for breath.
Jackson returned to the TOC and sat up on the roof for a long time in the light rain.
Although he kept turning the starlight on, it remained dark.
After Alfred’s death Jackson wanted to put the starlight away and never look at it again.
He understood why Light wanted to get rid of it
and how Light had known nothing was going to happen to him
all those times Jackson had gone out in the bush to meet him.
But other soldiers had died during the attack,
and who was to say one of them, not Alfred,
was the doomed soldier he had watched in the scope.
The soldier might have died somewhere else, at Firebase Mary Lou or even in Laos.
Yet every night, Jackson looked at the scope because he wanted to know what the future held for him.
But he never saw himself in the scope, although he saw other soldiers die,
always shadowy forms whose identities were uncertain.
Jackson was sure he would recognize himself if he appeared in the scope.
Jackson was never more afraid, choking and gasping for breath,
than when he watched a doomed man’s image take form in the scope.
But Jackson gave no more warnings.
He had learned how useless that was by his experience with Alfred.
He never knew for sure who was going to die.
No one would believe him, and soon his reputation would be similar to Light’s.
Hale might banish him to the jungle.
Every night Jackson called Light on the radio but received no reply.
He thought about going out to find Light but Light had warned him to stay at the firebase.
Perhaps Light had seen something in the scope.
So Jackson kept watching men die in the scope,
the starlight glowing the green light,
the men’s bodies torn by shrapnel or bullets,
and as the glow faded and the screen turned dark,
Jackson was left breathless and afraid. (pp. 130-131)
