The smoke cleared after that; brief and intense firefight that left Buck soaked in sweat, shaking and sucking down the air, fouled with powder and gasoline fumes, as he quickly loaded three rounds into the shotgun to replace the ones he'd expended, and then another, because he had a round racked in the old shotgun anyway. He watched those flares go up with impassive eyes knowing what that shit meant -- his eyes shifted over to Bobby, to see if he needed another belt. They were in some deep shit in this place, with a crashed helicopter and a flare going up. The shakes always happened and, strangely enough, they never went to his hands. It was like his knees had to rattle a bit, just to vent off some of the extra tension. Barnes didn't care -- some guy made a comment about it when they'd just gotten in-country, another new guy like him, and then the dude got blown up when he grabbed an ammo can full of papers on a village search. Click, boom went the trap that he'd stepped on.

And Barnes was still here, still shaking.

The thing was, Barnes was a fairly tall guy, but skinny and the 'Nam was taking that off him, leaving him wiry and tough, but he humped extra ammo with no complaint, because he knew that the pig was one of the great advantages in the jungle. 

He used his towel to swab off the sweat from his brow, then stuffed it back along his neck, but it didn't really help -- they were on foot in the jungle, cut off, at least until An Khe realized they were gone, maybe the chopper pilot got a radio call out, and search and rescue started up.

That wasn't gonna help them now, though and this place wasn't safe at all. "Man, this place is about to be crawlin' with beaucoup VC in a hot fuckin' minute," he observed quietly to Bobby, keeping his eyes toward the tree line, scanning the area for movement. He'd managed to stay alive three and a months in Vietnam. It was one thing to get wasted a couple days in, but the idea of getting zapped after you've been in, this close to in country R&R, was far more horrific. He couldn't imagine what it would be like a couple weeks out from returning to the World. He didn't think about the World very much right now, because it was just excessively painful to do so.