Hard Rain

the
    Laotian border. In Vietnam it was called a 'personal kill' when you
    killed a specific individual with a direct-fire weapon and were certain
    of having done it yourself. I was seventeen at the time.
    I was part of a three-man recon team. The teams were small, and
    depended for success and survival on their ability to operate
    undetected behind enemy lines. So only men with the ability to move
    with absolute stealth were selected for recon. The missions required
    ghosts more than they required killers.
    It happened at daybreak. I remember the way I could just make out the
    mist rising off the wet ground as light crept into the sky. I always
    thought it was a beautiful country. A lot of soldiers hated it because
    they hated having to be there, but I didn't feel that way.
    We'd been in the field for two nights with no contact and were heading
    to the extract point when we saw this guy, alone, standing in a
    clearing. We froze and watched him from just inside the tree line. He
    was carrying an AK, so we knew he was VC. He was pacing, looking left,
    then right. He seemed to be trying to orient himself. I remember
    wondering whether maybe he'd gotten separated from his unit. He looked
    a little scared.
    Our guidelines were to avoid contact, but our mandate was to collect
    intelligence, and we saw that he was carrying a large book. Some kind
    of ledger. It might be a nice prize. We looked at each other. The
    team leader nodded at me.
    I knelt and brought up my CAR-15, finding the VC in the sights,
    waiting for a pause in the pacing.
    A few seconds passed. I knew I had time and wanted to be sure of the
    shot.
    He knelt and set down his rifle and the book. Then he stood, opened
    his pants, and pissed. Steam rose from where the hot liquid hit the
    earth. I kept him in my sights, thinking the whole time that he had no
    idea what was coming and that this was a fucked-up way to die.
    I let him finish and get himself back in his pants. Then, ka-popl I
    dropped him. I saw him go down. I had this feeling of incredible
    elation, that I'd succeeded! I'd won! I was good at this!
    We went over to where he lay. When we got there, I was surprised to
    see he was still alive. I'd hit him in the sternum and he had a
    sucking chest wound. He'd fallen on his back and his legs were splayed
    out. The ground underneath him was already dark with his blood.
    I remember being struck by how young he was. He looked my age. I
    remember that thought shooting through my mind God, same as me! as we
    stood in a circle around him, not knowing what to do.
    He was blinking rapidly, his eyes jumping from one face to another and
    then back again. They stopped on mine, and I thought it was because he
    knew I was the one who shot him. Later, I realized the explanation was
    likely more prosaic. He was probably just trying to make sense of my
    Asian features.
    Someone undid a canteen and extended it to him. But he made no move to
    take it. His breathing became faster and shallower. Tears spilled out
    of the corners of his eyes and he mumbled words in a high, strained
    voice that none of us could understand. I learned later that
    battlefield wounded and dying often call out to their mothers. He
    might have been doing that.
    We watched him. The chest wound stopped sucking. The blinking
    stopped, too. His head settled into the wet ground at an odd angle, as
    though he was listening to something.
    We stood around him silently. The initial sense of elation was gone,
    replaced with a weirdly intimate tenderness, and a horrified sadness so
    sudden and heavy that it actually made me groan.
    Same as me, I thought again. He didn't look like a bad guy. I knew
    that in some other universe we wouldn't have been trying to kill each
    other. Maybe we would have been friends. He wouldn't be lying dead on
    a jungle floor saturated with his own blood.
    One of the men I was with started to cry. The other began moaning Oh
    Jesus, oh Jesus, over and over again. Both of them vomited.
    I did not.
    We took the ledger. It turned out to contain some fairly useful
    information about VC payments to local village heads and other attempts
    to buy influence. Although of course, in the end, none of that had
    mattered.
    Someone on the Huey that picked us up afterward laughed and told me I'd
    popped my cherry. No one talked about how it really felt, or what had
    happened while we stood in a silent circle and watched the man die.
    When the army was assessing my suitability for the joint Special