The metal monster forged along to the squeaking and clanking of full-track treads, the reddish dust of the anhydrous dry season spuming behind it, doing maybe forty-per on the flat, straight road from Phu Loi.

If we were in a convoy, thought Gil MacDonald to himself as he stood in the track commander's cupola, I'd be digging that shit out of my teeth right now.  But I'd feel better.

The vehicle he rode was known by assorted names: "Armored Calvary Assault Vehicle," "track," or "Armored Personnel Carrier," but was most often referred to as an "APC."  He shifted his weight at the hips with automatic ease to compensate for the rigorous swaying, and tossing of the journey; the rhythms of his mechanical environment had long since become part of the substance of life, like the rolling which fosters sea legs.

Silly idea of the Old Man's, he reflected, to have the crew come into base camp to pick him up instead of waiting for a chopper to ferry him out to the forward area.  Still, it pleased the twenty-one-year-old sergeant in a personal way to know that Captain Cronkite wanted him back on the job immediately after his return from R and R.  The run forward wasn't such a long one, but enemy activity was on the upswing in the wake of Operation Big Sur.

He resettled his headset under his helmet liner and steel pot, not as comfortable an arrangement as a crew helmet, but crew helmets don't stop shrapnel too well either, and so, just as they endured hot, heavy fiberglass flak jackets, he and his men opted for safety.  He squinted around him through the searing heat that floated in waves from the baked road.

At least, he knew, Alpha-Nine, his APC, was topped off with fuel and stocked with ammo.  He ran his eye over the .50-caliber machine gun on its mount before him, satisfied that it had been well maintained in his five-day absence.  He knew, too, that Handelman, Olivier and Pomorski were sitting on the open cargo hatch behind him, scanning the terrain as he was.  Sometimes he found himself thinking of them in simple terms of rates and fields of fire, the first two as M-60 machine guns and the latter an M-79 grenade launcher.  They were his friends, but they were part of the APC, just as he was, the parts that guided it and reached out from it to kill.  Spend enough time in one of these things, he mused, and maybe you'd become integrated altogether, stop thinking of yourself as a human being.

The big V-8 engine pulled them briskly, equal to operating conditions even in Southeast Asia.  He blinked sweat from his eyes and made a mental note to grab a salt tablet the first time they stopped.  A sudden hissing from the radio brought him back from a brief reminiscence of his stay in Bangkok.

"Steel Probe one niner, Steel Probe one niner, this is Steel Probe six, Steel Probe six, over."

A cultured voice, it carried the faintest hint of the Southern Black drawl. Wondering why Captain Cronkite would want him right now, Gil flipped the transmit switch on his headset.

"Steel Probe six, this is Steel Probe one niner, over."

"Steel Probe one niner, this is Steel Probe six.  Halt and remain at your present location.  Ahh, Steel Probe one zero will rendezvous with you there, in approximately one five mikes.  Do you roger?  Over."

"Steel Probe six, this is Steel Probe one niner, roger your last transmission, over."

"This is Steel Probe six, out."