Alexander paled.
Moon Lai smiled. Her teeth were dazzling.
“Exactly.” She nodded. “You are very good, Anthony’s father. You see things. We said, your parents will be so glad to know you are alive, a POW in North Vietnam. But Anthony did not seem to think so at all. He said he would tell us everything, to keep his name from appearing on the POW rolls, and you from finding out he had been taken prisoner. How much valuable classified intel he gave us then! After all,” said Moon Lai, looking straight at Alexander, “he knows you are a wanted traitor and deserter, who killed sixty-eight of our men to escape his just punishment.”
Our men?
“And so now, Commander,” said Moon Lai, “are you coming with me? Because your son is waiting. Is your wife here, too, with you, perhaps?” She waited for his answer and when Alexander did not speak, she whispered, “What a pity.”
“Who are you?” Alexander whispered, inaudibly, trying not to gasp.
Her voice finally catching and breaking, Moon Lai said, “I want you to know I couldn’t help it. I loved him.” Her eye filled up, spilled over. “He was so…open. But you ask me who I am. Your son taught me this. Ask yourself these three questions, Moon Lai, he said to me, and you will know who you are. What do you believe in? What do you hope for? But most important, what do you love? And I will tell you. I am a Vietnamese Communist. That is what I believe in. That is what I hope for. That is what I love.”
Before she was finished speaking, before Alexander could move, could draw breath, a shiny sickle flashed in Moon Lai’s small hand, a splint blade that swung forward and plunged hilt-deep into Alexander’s inner thigh. She aimed straight at his femoral artery. He jerked in a half-inch, half-second reflex and she missed—just—but she was lightning swift, and in the next inhale, without losing her balance, she pulled the blade out, ready to thrust the knife into Ha Si’s face as he moved on her. But Alexander grabbed her wrist, and Ha Si had his own knife well in hand. She opened her mouth to scream and Ha Si yanked her head back and sliced his blade deep and wide across her throat. He pitched her on the ground away from them, and with her gurgling sounds behind him, dropped his knife and grabbed Alexander’s leg.
They both struggled with their hands over the red river, fighting to cover the deep wound. With one hand Ha Si pulled a QuikClot coagulant out of his first-aid pouch. It was painless, sterile and worked by physically absorbing the liquid from the blood. Alexander pressed it into the wound; grabbing a vial of silver nitrate from the pouch, Ha Si poured an unconscionable amount over the leg and yanked out an emergency kit. He laid the primary bandage on top of the QuikClot, strapped the pressure bar against Alexander’s thigh, tightened with adhesive and pulled the cords. He wrapped the secondary dressing twice around. All of this took no more than thirty seconds.
“I can’t believe I wasn’t more careful,” Alexander breathed out.
“You were plenty careful,” said Ha Si, dripping more silver nitrate over the bandages. “Your son got hooked and never saw the sickle until it was too late.”
“You wrapped it like a tourniquet,” said Alexander.
“The blood has to stop, Commander,” Ha Si said quietly.
“The blood will stop but I’ll lose my f*cking leg.” Alexander loosened the dressing.
“You will have your life,” said Ha Si.
“I need my leg,” Alexander said. “He is down there and we have to get him immediately before someone notices she’s missing. And easy with the nitrate.”
They waited a few moments to see if the blood would stop. “How do you know he’s down there?” asked Ha Si. “I was bluffing her.” He paused. “But I told you. She would be dead before she gave anything away.”
“She gave it away,” Alexander said, holding his leg, his hands red-gluey, sticky. “She couldn’t help what she is either. He’s down below.” He broke off, glanced behind Ha Si, breathed hard, stared down at his leg to retain his composure, stared down at his profusely bleeding leg to keep his voice and his face, so that he could speak his next words to the Yard. “Bannha,” Alexander said, with his head down, “could you—turn her away from me? Could you—turn her so her back is to me? Please.” He didn’t look up as Ha Si crawled across the straw. Alexander heard him flip Moon Lai’s pregnant body away. He breathed out.
“It is all right, Commander,” said Ha Si. “Do you want some morphine?”
“Get the f*ck out of here, morphine. I won’t be able to get up.”
“You think you are going to get up now?”
“Just stop the bleeding, will you?” The room, so hot before, was not just hot now, the air was wet with floating red particles and the hooch began to smell like rust, like magnetic metallic compounds, like they were sitting in a blood smelt. It was suffocating. They were breathing in four quarts of Moon Lai’s iron—and some quarts of Alexander’s. Silently they held their bandages and clothes and hands and silver metallic poisons against the slick thigh, and waited out the seconds.
“You forgot there are no civilians on the other side,” said Ha Si. “They are all enemy combatants. It is war, and you forgot even as her vicious words were reminding you. Her pregnancy was such a powerful weapon against you. She knew Ant had to learn it from somewhere. You did get careless.”
“Wrong,” said Alexander. “Rather, you’re right—I wasn’t listening to what she was saying. I didn’t give a shit about her principles or beliefs or whatever other f*cking thing she was telling me. And I’ve heard so many vicious things in my life, that frankly it’s just water off my back. I was listening for one thing and one thing only—whether I had been right in what I had observed of her, walking into this hut and walking out with lead on her shoulders. That lead was love. Every time she went down she was devastated from seeing him.” The opium vials told Alexander more than he wanted to know. “Once I knew she loved him, I knew she wouldn’t let him go into the Cuban Program. I knew he was down below.”
“Yes, but once you knew it, she had to kill you,” said Ha Si. “She sacrificed her own life, her baby’s life, to kill you.”
“Did she kill me?”
“I cannot stitch this,” said Ha Si. “The wound is deep. You need—”
“Ha Si,” said Alexander. “I know what I need. To get my son. Now stop my f*cking leg from bleeding and let’s get to it.”
Ha Si held him tighter. The seconds ticked. One minute became two. “You are lucky,” he said. “She pulled the knife out too quick trying to kill me. Look, the blood is already thickening. Let us wait five more minutes.” He gave Alexander some water.
Gulping it down, Alexander said, “We don’t have five minutes. We don’t have five seconds. Let’s go.” He got up and fell down. He couldn’t stand on his numb leg.
“Oh, we are f*cked,” said Ha Si. “We have to get out of here, ASAP.”
“No.” Alexander flipped on his radio. “Viper, viper,” he said into the VHF transmitter. “Come in.”
In a moment, Richter’s anxious voice sounded. “What’s wrong?”
“Back-up now,” said Alexander. “Mercer, Elkins, Tojo. Send them in, tell them absolute quiet. Now.”
Ha Si was staring at him as Alexander continued to gulp the water. “I’ll be fine,” he said.
“Five of us are going down this ladder one at a time?”
“Well, you heard her. Something out of her mouth had to be the truth, no? She said many guards. She said other POW. Who’s going to help them? Who is going to help Anthony? We need Tojo.”
“If she was telling the truth, there will not be enough of us. If she was lying, there will be too many.”
Alexander stared steadily at the Montagnard. “Ha Si,” he said, “you are going to pull up the cover, you are going to jump in, we’re going after you, we find Anthony, we get out.” He held his leg tightly. “The guards are likely sleeping. Day is night here, or haven’t you noticed? For the cave rats, too.”
Ha Si opened his mouth.
“Bannha,” Alexander said grimly, “this is absolutely not the f*cking time to argue.”
Shaking his head, Ha Si raised his compliant hand. “Yes, Commander. Every time you move your leg, you are reopening your wound, is all I will say.”
“I have to get my son. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“I do,” said Ha Si, taking out his knives, his Ruger, his StarLight. “My son was killed by the Vietminh during the land reforms of 1956. He was twenty. And he was on their side. He was a Vietminh, too.” He paused, his black eyes blackening. “Like I was.”
Alexander and Ha Si stared at each other for an interminable moment and then Alexander closed his eyes, slumping against the wall of the hooch. “Was she right, Ha Si, my Vietminh friend?” he whispered. “Do we just believe in the wrong things to fight this war to victory?”
“She was right, Major Barrington,” Ha Si said. “We believe in different things.”
Seconds later, Elkins, Mercer and Tojo were inside the hut.
“Holy f*ck!” said Elkins, seeing Alexander. He was quite a sight, his right leg soaked in blood from his thigh to his boot, his hands sticky red-brown, the rest of him spattered. Then Elkins saw the dead woman. “Please, please, don’t tell me that’s our girl.”
Alexander confirmed it was their girl.
“Is our boy under us?” Such excitement was in Elkins’s voice.
“We hope so. Our boy, other POW, maybe their guards. Now, all of you,” said Alexander, “stealth, silenced Rugers only, hand-to-hand, but no noise.”
“Got it,” said Mercer. “But we have to hurry. You need plasma, Major.”
Alexander took another drink of water. “I’m fine,” he said, and with enormous effort heaved himself off the ground. Losing blood was a little like remaining under ice too long—and Alexander had too much experience with both. Little by little you simply lost all sense of the imperative.
They got Richter back on the radio. Alexander told him what was happening. Richter, pleading all deliberate speed, said, “Our hook is already in Laos, just seven klicks away. As soon you are ready to move out, call me. It’ll be a klick away in thirty-seven seconds.”
“Please, all of you,” said Ha Si. “Quiet. I’m opening the lid, I’m going down.”
But no one moved. Alexander was having trouble standing. Blood was oozing out of his wound. He poured more silver nitrate on it, wrapped another dressing around it.
The four soldiers were looking at him with worry. “How are you feeling?” asked Elkins.
“I’m fantastic,” Alexander said, pulling the StarLight over his face. “Stop mothering me, and cowboy the f*ck up. Let’s go.” His weapons were on him. Casting one last look at Moon Lai, he asked if anyone had something to cover her with. So Ant wouldn’t see her if they brought him through here.
Tojo took the trench from his pack and threw it over her.
They stood over the lid. “Ready?” said Alexander. “And be quick. If you find any of ours, get them up, get them out, tell them to run up the hill. Watch out for the tripwire. Go.”
Ha Si opened the lid and listened below. All was quiet. He took a breath, nodded to Alexander, crouched and jumped ten feet down; he didn’t even need the ladder.
Alexander listened, heart pounding, breath stalled, as Ha Si went down into the darkness. There was no fire, but there was a grunting whoosh, whoosh, there were two silencer shots, a sound of a blade tearing into flesh, and rapid breath. Alexander went next, with his knife in his mouth, lowering himself by his arms to favor his leg and jumping the rest of the way, quickly grabbing hold of his knife and his Ruger. His StarLights took a few seconds to adapt to the dark. Mercer, Elkins, Tojo, came down after him. Before Alexander’s eyes fully adjusted, a green figure with a bayonet jumped him from the side; he barely had time to raise his knife to parry him; but raise his knife he did. The man fighting him was smaller and weaker, it was not an even fight despite the equalizing bayonet; the man went down. After that, Elkins and Mercer stepped in front of Alexander and Tojo went behind him. Where was Ha Si? They were in a rectangular open area with four corridors spanning out. There was damp straw on the ground. Slick liquid pooled up in the corners.
They moved uncertain and slow. Finally they found Ha Si, just inside one of the corridors, struggling with a large guard who was hanging on to Ha Si’s back and choking him. So someone was awake. Elkins yanked the guard off; Mercer shot him. But Ha Si was right—the noise of the silenced Ruger was too large for the cave.
“Don’t shoot anymore—if you can help it,” whispered Alexander. “Just find Anthony.”
They were in a pack now with Ha Si at point; it got very quiet. Alexander thought it might be false quiet. Water was dripping somewhere. They went down one corridor without flashlights, just their StarLights, their .22s cocked, their blades drawn, the five of them, whispering, Anthony, Anthony. That was their only refrain around the putrid cramped burrow in the sweating earth. It was Alexander’s only refrain. Anthony, Anthony.
He heard someone moan. “Ant, is that you?”
Another groaning sound.
“Anthony? Anthony?”
They found five unguarded U.S. soldiers huddled together in one messy pile on the floor of a locked bamboo cage. Five soldiers, a miracle! The men were bloodied and beaten. Ha Si broke open the lock; they rushed to the prisoners. Anthony, Anthony.
None of them was Anthony. Elkins and Mercer helped them up. One of them was dead. Should they leave him? He was someone else’s Anthony. Alexander said not to leave him. “Quick, get the rest of them up and out.”
Which of them was strong enough to carry a dead man? One PFC volunteered, crying.
“Tojo, help them up the ladder,” Alexander ordered, “and if they can hold a rifle, give them a rifle, and come right back. But don’t call Richter yet…not until…” He asked the POW: Anthony, Anthony?
They knew nothing. Three of them, including the dead man, had been captured just two days earlier. The other two had been here a week. They looked and sounded as if they could barely recite their name and rank for the captors.
“They were not at all well guarded,” Ha Si said. “F*cking Moon Lai. Lie is right. The men who charged me were sleeping near the ladder. It seems to be all there is. I don’t think they are expecting trouble.”
“Don’t get casual, Ha Si. The Sappers are sleeping but if we wake them, that’ll be it for us.”
Anthony, Anthony.
Ha Si went forward down a corridor, and disappeared in the darkness. Alexander tried to keep up, but had to walk deeply hunched through the tunnel and much slower. The corridor was coming to an end about forty feet in front of him. Alexander saw four guards leaning against the wall before a small bamboo cage. They were slumped in sleep. Alexander and Ha Si took a stealthy step, then another. But even damp straw crunched; they could be only so quiet on it. One of the men opened his eyes and, well trained, instantly reached for his weapon. Ha Si, also well trained, hurled his knife in the dark into the man’s throat. The other three were already on their feet. One blowgun shot from Ha Si—because it was accurate and quiet—two Ruger shots from Alexander—accurate but not as quiet. They ran up close; Ha Si retrieved his knife. The blowgun victim grabbed Alexander’s wounded leg and yanked him forward. Alexander grappled with him, his gunmetal knife blade slashing up and down in the dark like lightning. Finally Alexander threw him off while Ha Si was already unlocking the cage.
He opened the bamboo door, stood in front of it like a post—but didn’t go in. Alexander tried to get around the Yard.
“Move, Ha Si!”
Backing away, breathing out in struggling breaths, Ha Si said to Alexander in a stilted whisper, “I am going to call Richter and tell him we found Captain Barrington. I will be right back with Tojo to help you. See if you can get him up.” He didn’t look at Alexander again as he hurried away.
His head tilted under the low ceiling, Alexander walked in. In the small cage he saw Anthony, lying on his side on the black and bloodied straw. Alexander instantly saw that something was wrong, but what?
“Ant?”
He kneeled by him. He looked unconscious, but he was alive! He was barely dressed: prisoner pajama bottoms and an old Viet Cong shirt thrown over his torso. Alexander yanked off his green-eye and removed the shirt covering Anthony.
Then he saw. Anthony’s left arm was gone. It had been severed just a few inches below the shoulder and was now poorly bandaged with clean gauze—Moon Lai had just been here. Trying not to gasp, Alexander turned Anthony on his back and in the dimness saw his other arm, the inside of the elbow and the forearm a solid black from pierced needle marks. If Moon Lai kept him alive, it was by penicillin and opium alone. He was unclean and had savage wounds over the rest of his body.
Alexander looked away. He could not bear it. And when he looked again, he was blinded. “Ant…” he whispered, his hands on his son’s chest. “Ant.” He shook him.
Anthony opened his eyes and stared dully into his father’s face, and Alexander saw himself, a quarter century ago, lying in his own filthy straw, bloodied and without hope—waiting for the guards and the trains and the chains to come and take him, in his despair having refused food for days—and then opening his eyes and seeing his father, Harold Barrington, bending over him and whispering, “Don’t be proud, Alexander. Take some bread.” And he had said to his father, “Don’t feel sorry for me, Dad. This is the life I made for myself.”
And the ghost of his dead father, so close, his voice barely audible over his audible heartbreak, whispered, “No, Alexander. This is the life I made for you.”
And now Alexander—not a phantom—was kneeling over his own son, the same age, in the same straw, near the same death, in the same absence of hope, waiting for the same people, and he said, his voice barely audible over his audible heartbreak, “Anthony, I’m here. You’re going to be all right. I’ll help you. But get up, because we have to go right now if we’re going to make it.”
Anthony blinked. His eyes were glazed and cloudy. He was heavily drugged. But what a clearing when he said, “Dad?”
“Get up, Ant.”
Anthony started to shake. “Oh my God. I’m hallucinating again. Please go away. I know it’s not you. God, what’s happening to me?”
“You’re not hallucinating. Get up.” Alexander was trembling. Anthony’s legs were in irons, his remaining arm roped and tied to a ring in the wall. Alexander cut off the rope, and Anthony, lying on his side, reached out with his hand and touched his father’s very real face. He groaned. “Oh God. No, Dad. No…You don’t understand. You have to get out of here.”
“I understand, and we’re both getting out of here.” Alexander was fumbling with the key ring for the leg irons. He was having no luck. Coming back to Anthony’s head, he leaned over him; his arms went around Anthony, leaving bloodied prints.
“I can’t move,” said Anthony. “Look what they’ve done to me.”
What would Tania say?
“Anthony, Anthony…” Alexander whispered, pressing his face to Anthony’s head, lifting him off the straw to sit him up. “Can you hear me, son? You are my life and your mother’s life. You will always be for me my three-year-old boy playing in the yard, cutting your hair to look like mine, walking like me, talking like me, sitting on my lap, bringing me ladybugs, bringing me joy, keeping me alive. That’s what I see when I look at you. Remember fishing together, Ant, when you were little? You have no idea how much happiness you brought me. You’ve made me nothing but proud your whole life. Now come on, bud. You must get up and come with me. You will see, you will not fail—not you. You’ll be all right, but stand up, son. Come on, stand up, Anthony.”
The boy didn’t move.
He gazed at his father, his suffering eyes filled with incomprehension, confusion, pain, and then he turned his face away. “My mother can’t see me like this,” he whispered.
“Your mother,” said Alexander, “saw me like this in Sachsenhausen. Your mother wrapped her sister’s body in a sheet and buried her with her bare hands in an ice hole. Your mother will be fine, I promise you. Now get up.” Alexander kissed him. “Don’t worry about anything, just stand up.” When Anthony didn’t move, he said, “You know who else is here for you? Tom Richter.” Now Anthony turned his head. In his eyes flared a brief concession to regret and rapture beyond those two proper nouns.
Alexander, having no time to acknowledge anything, nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Tom Richter. First time in the jungle since 1962 and he’s here—for you. Elkins is here. Charlie Mercer is here. Ha Si is here. And Tojo, who is going to carry you on his back.”
Anthony whispered something.
“Son, I can’t hear you.” Alexander bent very close.
Without saying a word, Anthony pulled the Ruger out of Alexander’s front holster, and without moving his shoulders or legs, or straightening out his listing body, he cocked the weapon with one hand, aimed and fired twice behind his father. At the door of the bamboo cage, there was the thud of a falling man. Alexander turned around to look.
“There’ll be more where he came from,” Anthony said croakingly, giving the pistol back. “I’ll need another weapon. One I can shoot from the hip and change the cartridge myself. Single-handedly.”
“How about the M-60 with a hundred-round bandolier?” Alexander said lightly, straightening Anthony back to a sitting position.
“Perfect.” Anthony almost smiled.
Ha Si returned, kicking the dead guard out of the way. Elkins and Mercer were behind him. “Oh my God, Ant!” Elkins cried out and turned away. “Look what those motherf*ckers did to you.”
Tojo came back. The U.S. prisoners were out, already heading up the trail. Alexander asked Ha Si for help with the leg irons. Ha Si right away found the key on the ring and unlocked Anthony. “Elkins, turn around and face me. You are so f*cked up,” Anthony said, trying to stand. “What the hell are you doing here, man? Mercer Mayer, is that you?”
That was the familiarity! Mercer Mayer was the children’s book author. Anthony was right, Mercer did share some of the same physical characteristics with the Little Critter character—short, squat, dogged.
Mercer could not look up at Anthony. “It’s me, Captain,” he said, his tears falling on the straw.
Anthony stood with help, propped up against the wall and flanked by Alexander and Ha Si. Alexander saw that Elkins and Mercer were so distraught by the sight of the grievously wounded Anthony, they were having trouble doing what needed to be done. “Soldiers, come on,” he said. “Chin up. We found him.”
“Right,” said Anthony. “Cheer the f*ck up. And somebody, give me a pair of their BDUs, so I don’t have to wear these devil-spawn pajamas.”
Alexander had extra fatigues in his ruck. Tojo had an extra combat vest in his, and immediately started to take off his own boots, while Alexander pulled off Anthony’s NVA prison bottoms. Before the tunic went on, Ha Si properly wrapped a new clean dressing around Anthony’s mangled stump, tightly supporting it across the diagonal shoulder.
Anthony stood naked against the wall, slowly blinking, coming around.
“Tojo, man,” he said, “thanks for the boots, but what are you going to wear? Dad—oh my God, Dad—what happened to your leg?” Anthony own legs buckled from under him. “You’re—”
“Don’t worry about that right now,” Alexander told him, pulling the tunic over him. “I’ll be fine.” He held up his son while Mercer and Elkins struggled to put the fatigues and the boots over Anthony’s swollen uncooperative legs and feet. Anthony was groaning; he kept sliding down. Ha Si was holding him, Alexander was holding him, five grown men lifting up their son, their commander.
“Does it hurt, man?” Elkins whispered.
“I feel nothing,” Anthony replied in a hollow voice. He stood up straight—but not on his own. Ha Si said he wished he had a shot of Dexedrine. They gave him bread instead, they gave him a drink, ripped open a ration, gave him some peanut butter, a cracker. He chewed listlessly, drank egregiously, swayed.
“What? What? What do you need, son?” Alexander kept saying.
Anthony’s only arm was around his father’s shoulder. “A f*cking cigarette.”
“God, you and me both. Let’s get out of here so we can have one.”
Ha Si’s calm voice kept telling them that they desperately needed to hurry. But before they left, Anthony ordered Elkins and Mercer to set up two closely staggered Claymores in the main corridor leading to the sleeping quarters; when they went off one on top of another, Anthony said, the cave dwelling would be rent in half, as if earth itself were opening its jaws. They set up the Claymores, ran tripwires in all directions. Anthony ordered two CS smoke grenades (“to suffocate them”) to be set up in front of the Claymores, and when he was satisfied, he said let’s go, but couldn’t walk.
“Have you not stood up during all this time?” Alexander asked.
“Oh, I’ve stood up,” said Anthony with unveiled hatred. “They tie me up once a day and jack me up on a hoist while she comes and cleans me and…tends to me. Nurses me back to health.” Black irony was in his voice. “Did you…see her?”
Alexander exchanged a glance with Ha Si. He didn’t want to lie to his son, but he also knew they didn’t have time for this discussion. “Oh, we’ve seen her, Ant.”
Anthony was disoriented. What’s the date today, he asked, and then became even more disoriented when they told him, trying to wrap his brain around how many months he’d been in captivity. My tour was over in August, he muttered. That was going to be it for me. I was coming back stateside. With her. There was something else he was having trouble getting out. He was having trouble. “It can’t be early December.” He paused, tried to find the words. “Her…baby is supposed to be born in early December—”
“Come on, Ant,” said Alexander, prodding him forward, holding on to him. “No time to chitchat. Let’s go.”
“What month is it, really?”
“Let’s just get to the hook. Later for talking.”
Tojo carried Anthony to the ladder, but how were they going to pull Anthony up by only one arm? He was going to have to help himself somehow. Tojo was behind him, supporting him, but it was Anthony who had to grab on to the rungs. He didn’t, couldn’t. His hold slipped, he fell backward, was stopped only by Tojo.
Alexander went in front of his son, steadied him on his feet, took his head into his hands and looking straight into his face, said, “Anthony, your mother at fourteen climbed out of a f*cking bear trap with no ladder and with a broken arm. And no Tojo propping her from behind. So f*cking pull yourself up by your one arm. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Alexander kissed Anthony’s forehead and pushed him forward.
Before climbing, Anthony ordered Ha Si to set up two more grenades in the straw below the ladder and to place another CS smoke bomb next to it. “To choke them to death,” said Anthony, “as they are being fragged apart.”
It had been fifty-five minutes since Moon Lai left her hut. Alexander was tense like heavy crystal falling over and over on the marble tiles. At last they were all above ground. Anthony held on just tight enough for Tojo to propel him upward, rung by excruciating rung, and then Elkins pulled him up the rest of the way.
And there was Moon Lai—lying under Tojo’s trench.
The five men quickly blocked Anthony’s view of her, ushering him to the door, but the stench of decaying blood in the humid heat was overpowering, and there was no mistaking the shape of a small body, even under a trench. Anthony glared at his men blocking him and said, “I may not be able to tell my father what to do, but you are a different story. Move the f*ck out of my way, and I’m not asking you.” Reluctantly they moved out of his way. Pulling up the trench, Anthony stood over her. His legs shook.
He turned to his father, his black-and-blue face an impenetrable mask. Only his lips trembled. He looked at Alexander, looked at Alexander’s red-soaked leg, collected his voice, swallowed, and said as calmly as he could, “She was a demon-whore. She twisted all truth, all the things I believe in, all the things I told her into f*cking evil contortions. Think no more about her.” Her pregnancy went unspoken. There was nothing anyone could say. Anthony turned to Ha Si. “Well, point man,” he said coolly, “don’t just stand there and gawk at me with your silent eyes. Tell me, is it safe to go?”
Ha Si stuck his head outside. “All clear, Captain,” he said.
Anthony asked for Alexander’s Colt.
Alexander gave Anthony the Colt. “Ha Si, let Tojo go first. Tojo, your only mission is uphill, one klick, and get Ant on the freedom bird home. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tojo, you’re a giant among men,” said Anthony.
“Captain Barrington, I actually am a giant among men,” said Tojo.
Alexander called Richter, told him they had Anthony, were moving out and to call for the hook.
One two three. They counted time to order it.
Ha Si took one step outside, with Anthony, Tojo and Alexander following behind.
Alexander instantly saw two women about thirty meters away walking toward the hooch. The women saw them and started to scream and run toward the passed-out sentries. They must have been coming to see what had been taking Moon Lai so long because in three days, no one besides Moon Lai and the sentries ever came to this side of the village during daylight hours.
Ha Si raised his weapon, but before he could fire, Anthony from behind him fired unhesitatingly with the Colt. The noise was shattering. The women fell and stopped screaming. But they had been loud, and the two shots were louder. There was a tick of silent time passing and then a wailing siren pierced the camp, sounding just like a bombing siren during the siege of Leningrad. Perhaps they were reusing the same sirens, Alexander thought. It really did sound uncannily like the sirens from Leningrad.
What was good about Tojo was that in the five seconds transpiring between the opening of the hut door and the sound of the siren, he was already ten meters up the hill with six-foot-two Anthony slung over his back. And he was right to do it. They didn’t have an extra second. “Watch the tripwire!” Alexander yelled behind him. He, Elkins, Mercer, Ha Si were behind Tojo running up their narrow trail, their heads mostly hidden by the elephant grass. Ha Si was now at tail, a role Alexander didn’t think he was well suited for. They were running as fast as they could, but it was six hundred feet up through barely cleared grass, over rocks and uneven terrain, and Tojo could only move so fast, carrying a two-hundred-pound injured weight, and so the rest of the column had to keep Tojo’s pace, with Alexander saying, come on, faster, Tojo, faster, even as the blood dripped from his own leg. But he knew the ironclad rule of warfare—anything standing gets hit. And when you’re running uphill with the enemy behind you, you get hit in the back. He heard the pop pop crackle of the rifles going off and yelled, “Right to the hook, Tojo. It’s an order. Don’t stop for anything.”
“Yes, sir.” Tojo was panting.
When they were halfway up the hill, three hundred feet up, Ha Si looked back. Alexander heard him say with uncharacteristic emotion, “Oh f*ck.”
Those were his last words. A round hit him in the back and he fell. Mercer grabbed him, slung him over his shoulder, and it was a good thing he did, because another round hit Ha Si.
Alexander turned around. And with characteristic emotion, he said, “Oh, f*ck.” Though his view was impeded by elephant grass, he saw at least a hundred NVA soldiers still in their oxymoronic sleepwear, with Kalashnikovs in hand, pouring out of the village hooches and from manholes in the ground, running, flying to the hill, ignoring the razor-sharp grass and the single-line-formation rule. An unruly wave of men cut right through the grass even as it was cutting through them. Without helmets or boots they ran, rifled up and fired up.
Alexander sent everyone in his team up ahead, remaining at tail; he counted, one, two, three—and there it went. One barefoot NVA soldier finally tripped a Claymore wire. There was a loud spread-out popping burst and widespread screaming. Someone tripped another Claymore. And another. More popping, more screaming. That slowed the bastards down a bit. Alexander caught up with Mercer, who was struggling up the hill with Ha Si on his back. Alexander ordered Mercer to stop running; from his M-16-mounted grenade launcher, he blooped three arching rockets right into the confused, mined-up, fragged-up midst below, and the grenades slowed them and upset them. He took Ha Si from Mercer, slung him onto his own back and resumed running.
The bloopers slowed the NVA—but didn’t stop them. Neither did the Claymores. Alexander kept glancing back. Shouting to each other, the NVA ran another ten meters uphill. Alexander, carrying Ha Si, heard the second tier of Claymores detonate. A few men broke through, running up parallel to Alexander on the decoy trail—running up right into Harry’s hidden punji sticks. The men screamed, stopped running. Harry would have been proud. Alexander opened fire straight from the hip, shooting through the man-high grass with Ha Si on his back.
He himself was now three-quarters to the top. Tojo was almost at the top. Mercer, now at tail, would run, stop, turn, fire in short bursts, then turn and run again. Elkins, out in front, was emptying his cartridges, reloading, and running. Tojo cleared the hill, thank God, but instead of moving into the jungle, as he had been ordered, he set Anthony down.
From fifty feet below, Alexander yelled, “Go! What the f*ck did I tell you? Go!” But Tojo didn’t go. Instead he ripped the rifle from his back and opened sustained fire.
Alexander turned around to look and saw why Tojo decided to disobey a direct order. A small tick of panic crawled inside Alexander, got lodged in, and stayed. It was the Sappers. They were running, falling, crawling through the grass, on their bellies, still in waves. On their bellies, they tripped the Claymores and got greased, but the rest, though injured and moaning, continued to run up, to creep up. And there were more and more of them, tens, dozens, hundreds crawling out of the ground like small twisting asps, slithering out, creeping and running up the hill.
Dropping Ha Si to the ground, Alexander swung around, stood in a straight line with Elkins, Mercer, and Tojo and they opened up at the dark forms below. Richter and the six Yards remained just off to the side, in a great position on very high ground. They had been inflicting enormous damage with their propelled grenades and the M-60—less a machine gun than a fire-breathing dragon.
Yet despite this, some of the NVA were a quarter-way up the hill. Alexander could see their black helmetless heads flashing through the yellow grass. He ordered his men to find cover, found himself a rock and some nice vegetation to hide behind, set his rifle on semi and began shooting the Sappers in short bursts, picking them off one by one, not wasting his fire. They were so dark and moved so slow through the light-colored grass, thinking they were hidden, thinking Alexander couldn’t see them, and then they tried running, thinking he couldn’t hit a moving target.
They were very wrong on both counts.
Forty seconds to aim and fire twenty rounds, reload in three—and again. He did that five times. Did he get a hundred heads for his trouble? Tojo, Mercer and Elkins were as desperately as Alexander trying to ward off the advancing Sappers. Mercer too was picking them off one by one, while Elkins was auto-unloading at the dispersing men, and Tojo was blooping rockets down below straight into the village huts. No quiet escape and evasion here, no subtle extraction. Kum Kau was burning in a black, acrid battle for the order of the universe. Did they get a hundred heads each for their trouble?
Richter and his six Yards were spreading out. At Richter’s entrenchment, two Yards were splitting the ascending Sappers with grenades and the other three were pulverizing them with M–16 rounds. One Yard was the M-60, which Alexander knew any second was going to run out of twelve hundred rounds of armor-piercing ammo. Did they get twelve hundred unarmored North Vietnamese for their trouble?
Alexander hoped so, because the M-60 ran out of ammo, and the rapid fire went quiet. In a moment the selective M-16 fire resumed.
The Sappers were not selective. They had their AK47s set on automatic and were just hosing down the elephant grass as they continued to run uphill.
“Where’s Ant?” Alexander yelled without looking behind him at the woods. “Tojo—could someone take him to f*cking extraction!” No one heard him.
Richter called Alexander on the radio. “Hook’s waiting. Abandon your position and retreat. Move out to the hook now.” The radio went dead.
Here was the trouble—Alexander couldn’t move out to the hook now. He and his men couldn’t run five feet through the jungle, much less a whole klick, because as soon as they ceased fire, the Sappers quickened their pace and jacked up their fire, shooting Alexander’s men in the back. The f*cking NVA were not retreating; they were stampeding up that hill, and though they were falling to rockets, to mines, to the grease gun, more and more kept coming. As if in a nightmare, they were pouring out from the underground like nothing Alexander had ever seen. They were like the f*cking Hydra, he thought, loading a high-explosive shell into the breech of his missile launcher and pressing the trigger. You kill them, and they just grow new heads.
Alexander’s men couldn’t move out, but they couldn’t stay where they were either—because their position on top of the hill was in five short minutes going to become indefensible. Alexander’s ammo would be gone before all the NVA were gone, that was becoming very clear. Before they were overrun by three battalions of barefoot men in pajamas with Kalashnikovs, Alexander’s guys needed to get a kilometer into the woods to the helicopter, because no matter what else happened, one thing had to happen—Anthony had to be on that bird.
Alexander lobbed a CS smoke grenade for more black confusion below, more thick teary havoc, and backed away from his enclosure, running into the woods, where he found Anthony with Ha Si by his feet.
“How is he?” he breathed out.
“Not good,” was Anthony’s reply.
Alexander flipped on his radio to call for one of Richter’s Yards, but Anthony stopped him. “Throw him on my back, Dad,” he said, slowly standing up and putting the Colt in his leg pocket. “I’m not good for anything else. Let me help. You need the Yards for other things. Throw him on my back and push me in the direction of the trail. How far in?”
“One klick, but please f*cking hurry,” said Alexander, lifting Ha Si onto Anthony, who started to walk like a rambling drunk man, holding on to Ha Si’s slumped head with his one hand.
Back at the edge of the hill, the situation had gotten only more desperate. The Sappers had so thoroughly dispersed up the sides of the mountain that Alexander realized they were trying to flank his men. And sooner rather than later, the A-team was going to run out of ammo and still be a klick away from the chopper. Someone said, yelled maybe, we’re done for, retreat, retreat.
Richter called Alexander on the radio. “F*ck it all to hell,” he said. “I called in the snakes and the Bright Light team. The critical SITREP: we are not getting out of this by ourselves. Just assess the f*cking situation. This is prairie fire.” There were three kinds of emergencies: team, tactical, and prairie fire—where you were engaged by a numerically superior force, surrounded and about to be annihilated.
“How long before the Bright Lights?”
“Thirty minutes,” said Richter.
“Richter!” yelled Alexander. “We don’t have three f*cking minutes!”
One of the Sappers thought to bring an RPG-7. Alexander saw him. Tojo saw him and shouted, “Holy shit! Incoming!” and mowed the man down, but not before a launched rocket sailed through the air, landed twenty feet below Richter’s rocky encampment and exploded upwards into gray sickening smoke.
The radio went dead.
For five seconds as Alexander was running to Richter, there was no sound.
Richter was down.
Three of the six Yards were down.
Tojo fell down and started to cry. “How bad, how bad?” he kept asking Alexander.
“All the f*cking way, Tojo,” said Alexander. Richter’s leg was gone, his side gone, his neck had a grapefruit-size hole in it. For a moment Alexander couldn’t speak. He held up Richter and made a sign of the cross on his forehead. Inaudibly Alexander whispered what he had whispered over a thousand men. Lord Jesus Christ, most merciful, Lord of Earth, I ask that You receive this man into Your arms that he might pass safety from this crisis, as You have told us with infinite compassion.
They had to go and go now. “Tojo,” said Alexander to the weeping giant, “we have to move out ASAP or we’re all f*cked. They’re going to flank us in the woods and cut off our retreat. I’ll get Mercer and Elkins. Tell your Yards to pick up their fallen and order those who can to fire at tail. Now grab your commander and let’s go.”
Alexander’s hand had remained on Richter’s head. “You’re going to be okay, Tom,” he said. “Just hang tight, man.” He pressed his lips to Richter’s bloody forehead and whispered, “Hang tight, my good friend.” Because there are many mansions in His father’s house, and He is preparing a place for you. Then Alexander jumped up and ran, as Tojo, continuing to cry, lifted Tom Richter off the ground.
The Yards picked up their own. Mercer had gotten hit in the leg and was limping down the trail with Elkins covering him, Alexander covered Tojo, as they ran through the woods in a single file.
Tojo, with Richter on his back, flew down the trail first and fast, but for Alexander, never did one kilometer, three thousand feet, seem so agonizingly long. There were fewer Sappers following them through the woods because they got hosed by another three Claymores at the top of the hill. Those that got through dispersed, trying to flank the U.S. soldiers, and new ones continued coming up from below, but slower. Just not slow enough. The enemy hid in the vines, and Alexander’s Yard at drag kept getting hit—once in the arm, once in the thigh—and falling down. Alexander had to keep coming back to help him up, to push him onward. Little by little, Alexander was getting left farther behind with his Yard, who was now bleeding from the arm and both legs, but still somehow managed to get up, run, crank off rounds. When the Yard couldn’t walk and fire anymore, Alexander carried him through the bamboo, but he couldn’t continue like this, he had to protect his men. He told the Yard to crawl to the clearing as best he could. Alexander alone remained tail gunner, covering his wounded men as they inched to the hook.
Where was that f*cking hook?
Mercer got hit again, got up again, slowed down, but never stopped firing. He was very good, that Mercer Mayer. Dogged, stoic, bloody-minded, good. Anthony was right; even wounded, Mercer saw the enemy in the hazel bamboo, saw them and killed them. Elkins, too, but then he got hit in the shoulder and couldn’t hold his rifle with two hands anymore, and became much less accurate. Alexander shouted at him to just bloop the rockets at the moving bushes and forget about sniper fire, and he did.
Alexander ran when he could, hid in bamboo when he couldn’t, and walked half backward, half forward the rest of the time, firing in all directions, trying to weed out the overgrown flanks from the concealed Sappers. He threaded a tripwire like a tail behind him, and quickly set up one of his few remaining Claymores. When the NVA would get close enough for him to see through the foliage, he would lob a frag bomb at the brush; he lobbed three frag bombs, two of his HE shells; he set the woods on fire with his rifle—and still the Sappers kept bunching up; in small groups, hiding, running, shooting and coming.
Alexander thought he heard the sound of the turbine engine and the chopper blades up ahead; maybe it was just wishful thinking. He glanced through the woods. No, it was the Chinook, whup-whup-whup-ping only fifty yards away through the thick trees.
Alexander yelled for Tojo, whom he could barely see. “Tojo, who’s on the hook?”
He heard Tojo’s voice right next him as he grabbed and lifted the badly injured tail Yard. “Almost everyone’s on, sir. I’m taking him in or he won’t make it. You, too, let’s go, Major. Run in front of me.”
“No.” Elkins wasn’t on, Mercer wasn’t on. “Go, Tojo,” said Alexander. “Get him on and come back for those two. Go, I said.” Tojo ran.
Forty yards.
Elkins and Mercer were helping each other up, bleeding, hidden by the trees, wavering, but still firing. They moved five camouflaged yards when Tojo was already back from the chopper.
“Tojo!” Alexander called, “is my son definitely on?”
A voice sounded right next to him. “No, Dad,” Anthony said. “He definitely isn’t.” The M-16 was at his right hip. He was holding it with his one arm.
“Anthony!” yelled Alexander, glaring at Tojo and then at his son. “Are you f*cking crazy? Get on that bird!”
“I get on when you get on,” Anthony said. “So let’s go. And leave Tojo out of it. He doesn’t give me orders. I give him orders.”
But there was no way Alexander could get on, with four of his men, including Anthony, still twenty yards away from safety. The remaining NVA men quickly staked out positions trying to move closer to the clearing. The Chinook, which was armed and had a crew, could not open artillery fire blind through the woods where American soldiers were fighting so close to the enemy, the enemy who in one burst of a moment was going to make the landing zone a hot landing zone, a red landing zone, and extraction was going to become exponentially more difficult, if not f*cking impossible. And once the NVA got close enough to bloop a rocket at the Chinook, no one would get out. Alexander stopped moving forward and emptied his chambers backward to give Tojo, Elkins and Mercer—and Anthony most of all—a chance to get on the chopper. He got off the trail, hid in the cyprus trees, and fired on automatic without moving a foot to the helicopter.
Mercer and Elkins were finally near the edge of the clearing, slowly limping toward the hook, trying to stay by the vegetation and not come out into the open. Tojo, bleeding from his own neck wound, was moving, but all three remained under fire.
Mercer Mayer got hit again. He fell down and this time did not get up. Tojo returned to pick him up.
Hidden behind the trees, Anthony stood, shoulder to shoulder against his father, firing his rifle from the hip. When his ammo ran out, he dropped the empty magazine to the ground, flipped the weapon under his bandaged stump, muzzle down, barely holding it in place and, stretching out his right hand, said, “Clip, Dad,” to Alexander, who passed him another 20-round magazine. Anthony jammed it up, slammed the catch down, switched the rifle back to his hip and resumed fire. The tracer rounds had been loaded very carefully and conscientiously by Alexander near the very bottom of the magazine with two rounds under them to signal when the clip was about to run on empty.
“Clip.”
“Clip, Dad.”
“Clip.”
“Anthony,” yelled Alexander. “Please! Get on the f*cking slick.”
“Clip.” Anthony didn’t even reply to his father.
“Are they on?” Anthony was blocking his view.
Anthony looked. “Elkins is on. Tojo is almost on with Mayer,” he said. They were ten yards from the clearing. There were still dozens of NVA hiding in the fern leaves, spot-shooting at them.
“Motherf*ckers,” said Anthony. “Clip, Dad.”
Shoulder to shoulder they stood in the bamboo.
“Is this like Holy Cross?” Anthony asked.
“No,” said Alexander. Holy Cross had no bamboo, or my son in it.
“Ha Si didn’t make it.” Anthony emitted a small groan. “Clip, Dad.”
How many were left? God, how many had there been? Alexander unloaded a grenade into the bushes. He couldn’t see who he was shooting at anymore, and he nearly couldn’t hear. Throughout his life, in battles like this, his instincts became wolf-like with the flooding adrenaline: he saw and heard and smelled everything with painfully heightened acuity. But he had to admit that the deafening noise from several thousand rounds of sustained fire and from the hook rotary blades was diminishing him.
Hidden by bush, a Sapper lobbed an RPG-7 rocket right into the clearing. The shell exploded fifteen yards from the chopper, which lifted off into the air for a minute before it could set back down in the flaming grass. The Chinook opened brief fire, but the Sappers were deep in the bamboo; you couldn’t see them, you couldn’t get them. They had two, three locations, maybe four. The Chinook gunner on the mounted weapons thought he was shooting at his own men and was forced to stop.
Anthony said, “Dad, rocket at one o’clock for the RPG bastard.”
Alexander loaded a 40mm rocket into the breech, fired at one o’clock.
Anthony was quiet. “Try one more. One o’clock. Not two-fifteen.”
Alexander loaded one more, fired. “That was the last one,” he said, feeling through his vest and bandolier.
“That’s all the motherf*cker needed. That was perfect. Clip, Dad.” Dropped the empty magazine, jammed in the new one, resumed fire.
Was there less return fire, or was Alexander just deaf? No, he wasn’t deaf. He heard his son loud and clear:
“F*ck. Clip, Dad.”
Very soon there would be no more clips.
Richter had been right. Tens of thousands of rounds of ammo was not enough.
Moon Lai had been right. They were willing to lose every man to the last, while Alexander wasn’t willing to lose even one.
He had to hold them off long enough for Anthony to get on the hook. Grabbing his son and pushing him away from the trees, Alexander started backing him slowly out to the small clearing, while he continued to walk backwards, firing into the jungle leaves in three-round bursts. Take that, you motherf*ckers. And that. Another three rounds.
“Anthony!” he yelled in desperation over the noise of the blades and his rifle. “Please! Can you just get on the f*cking hook? Run, I’m covering you. Run. I’m right behind you.”
“Yes, but who is covering you?”
“The gunner. Tojo from the hook. Go, Antman. Go.” Pushing his son, shoving him with his body, continuing to fire. Finally, reluctantly Anthony went.
How long did Alexander’s mad minute last? Fire on all burners at maximum intensity, at maximum velocity? How many magazines had he gone through, how many grenades? How many rounds did he have left before he ran on empty? Go, Anthony, go. Go, son.
Suddenly Alexander wasn’t running. Just like that. He was standing, firing one second, and the next he didn’t even blink and was on the ground. He wondered if he blanked out, blacked out for a moment, maybe got tired, lay down and didn’t remember. He didn’t know what happened. What the f*ck, he said, and tried to get up. He could barely sit up. He felt something bubbling up in his throat. Frowning he looked down—and threw up. Blood poured out of his mouth onto his combat vest, oh no, and instantly he was wheezing for breath. He ripped open his vest, his tunic. Blood was coming out from a hole in his chest. Alexander opened his mouth, but he couldn’t breathe; he was choking. His mouth and nose were full of blood he kept trying to cough out, to clear his breathing passage. He reached behind to feel his back. Bits of his battle fatigues mixed with blood and bone came off on his hand. The f*cking round went right through him. Alexander became overwhelmed; his eyes clouded; he didn’t know where his son was, if he was all right, if he was on the hook, where he himself was, where the Sappers were. He didn’t know anything. He couldn’t find his emergency kit, and he couldn’t breathe, and he was seriously f*cking bleeding.
And he panicked.
And it was at the moment that he was overpowered with fear and anxiety he could not control that from behind him he heard a soft calm familiar voice, a voice not a face—and as soon as he heard it, he said in his own calm, very loud voice, No f*cking way, no, Tatiana. Get away from me, and started rummaging wildly for his ruck with blind man’s hands pawing the ground, while her unrelenting voice from behind him blew her breath in his ear and whispered, Alexander, calm down, slow down, and open your eyes. Just calm down, and open your eyes. And you will see.
He crawled back on his haunches, hoping to find a tree to press his back against and tripped over his ruck! Instantly he stuck his hand inside, pulled out the field dressing kit, and with one fumbling hand, managed to get the pressure bar around his chest and pull the rip cord that tightened automatically. The kits were supposed to be worked one-handed by the wounded: that was their purpose in the field. The pressure bar was better than nothing. He pressed his back against a tree, gasping for breath. Suddenly he saw again—Anthony’s desperate face. I’ve been hit but it’s okay, son, Alexander wanted to say. Please—just get on the f*cking hook.
Now he knew what the most important thing was: to get on the hook. Everything else they could fix.
With one hand, Anthony was tying a plastic trench around Alexander’s back and chest, wrapping gauze around him, screaming something, holding him up. Alexander thought he saw Anthony mouth to him: Close your eyes, Dad, smoke bomb incoming. Anthony covered Alexander’s mouth and nose with wet gauze, there was a whooshing pop, and suddenly Alexander really couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t see Anthony for all the coal-tar suffocating tear gas around him.
Anthony lifted him up—how did he do this, with one arm?—lifted him and ran through the smoke! Oh, now he runs. Two hundred pounds on top of him—and now he runs.
Was that dimming sound the rotary blades? And wind? And sudden loud fire? Now that there was no one in the woods but the Sappers—Alexander the last man out—the hook opened some serious f*cking smoke from the mounted M-60. And then—finally!—the boy was in the bird.
Alexander saw the gray interior of the chopper, saw Anthony above him, as if his head were in Anthony’s lap, and though he couldn’t breathe at all, he could almost breathe now.
Because his boy was in the bird.
And the bird lifted off, whup-whupped in the air with its rotary wings, tilted once toward earth, once toward the bright sun, and flew away.
Alexander wished he weren’t lying down, but obviously he could not sit up anymore or Ant would have sat him up. Anthony knew how much his father hated lying down. There were gravely tense faces around him, Tojo, Elkins, unfamilar faces, a medic. He was being turned over, something was being pressed to him, done to him, then he was on his back again, his tunic was being torn off. He felt great commotion around him.
But Ant was right above him. In such relief Alexander looked at his son’s injured face, but when he turned his head again and opened wide his eyes, he didn’t see Anthony.
Alexander saw Tatiana.
They stared at each other. Every ocean, every river, every minute they had walked together was in their gaze. He said nothing, and she said nothing. She kneeled by him, her hands on him, on his chest, on his heart, on his lungs that took air in but could not move air out, on his open wound; her eyes were on him, and in her eyes was every block of uncounted, unaccounted-for time, every moment they had lived since June 22, 1941, the day war started for the Soviet Union. Her eyes were filled with everything she felt for him. Her eyes were true.
Alexander didn’t want to see her so desperately that he turned his face away, and then he heard her voice. Shura, said Tatiana, you have young sons. You have a baby girl. And I am still so young. I have my whole life still to live. I cannot live another half my life on this earth without my soul. Please. Don’t leave me, Shura.
He heard other things, other voices. His arms were raised, sharp things prickled his forearm, something was dripping in. A sharp thin long thing went in his side, it felt like he was stabbed from his rib straight to his heart with an ice pick. He couldn’t see anything, not even Tatiana. He couldn’t close or open his eyes at all. They were motionless.