Tiger the Lurp Dog: A Novel by Kenn Miller

something was up. He shrugged off his jungle blanket and reached for the charging handle of his Claymore with one hand and the pistol grip of his rifle with the other. Everybody was up and alert, but with a glance Mopar could tell that none of them was preparing for action. Wolverine was holding the headset of his radio—the support radio—against his ear, and Gonzales was listening to Marvel’s headset.
    “They’re hitting Culculine,” Marvel whispered. “Listen … you can hear the mortars.”
    Mopar dropped the charging handle of his Claymore and cupped his hand behind his ear. At first he couldn’t hear anything but the rain in the treetops, but after his ears adjusted to that sound, he could make out the faint crumpling of mortars, far away to the northeast. It was hard to believe that people might be dying to that sound, it sounded so soft and innocuous at this distance.
    Gonzales and Wolverine exchanged glances, and then a second or two later Mopar and Marvel could hear the sudden ripping sound of small-arms fire—sounding much closer than the mortars had, although that was to be expected because small-arms fire always sounded closer than it was when heard at night. There was one burst, then another, then a long drawn-out rattle of machine-gun fire, followed by an ominous silence. The mortars had stopped, and now, apparently, so had the small-arms fire.
    “Legs …” Mopar muttered disdainfully. The troops guarding the Culculine perimeter were Legs and didn’t have enough sense to hold their fire and wait for a target. Paratroopers would never have opened up in panic like that, Mopar thought, suddenly worried about the guys on radio relay having to depend on a bunch of Legs for perimeter security. He could just imagine the Legs crawling out of their bunkers at the first letup in the mortar barrage and shooting wildly at shadows while their officers shouted and blustered and tried to get them under control.
    The mortars began to sound again, and far off to the east Mopar thought he heard a bugle, but he wasn’t sure that it wasn’t just his imagination. Now, even before the mortar barrage ceased, there came again the sound of small-arms fire.
    Wolverine took his headset away from his ear and leaned over to whisper in Mopar’s ear and then Marvel’s.
    “They blew a gap in the wire,” he said, trying his damndest to sound laconic and objective about it, even though he knew that the relay team was now in danger. “Artillery’s depressing a couple of guns for direct fire. Those poor jerks are jumping through their apexes—listen.”
    He handed the headset around so that Mopar and Marvel could hear the panic in the fire direction center. The poor bastards were screaming orders into the radio, even though their own people were operating on a different push and couldn’t hear what was being yelled over the external net.
    “Disgraceful!” Wolverine said, shaking his head sadly. “If it weren’t for the relay team, I’d be rooting for the gooks.”
    Mopar’s jaw dropped. He stared first at Wolverine, then at Marvel. What was this treasonous peacecreep bullshit? What the fuck had happened to the hardnose lifer who’d insisted on using a field pad and hand signals, even when it was obvious that they were in a cold Recon Zone? Were two days in the field—one of them spent laying dog in a night halt position—enough to turn a three-tour Special Forces veteran into a babbling peace-creep? Mopar was disgusted.
    By now there were gunships circling over Culculine, and Gonzales, who was keeping on top of things by monitoring the Lurp command net, acknowledged a message from the rear and turned to whisper in Wolverine’s ear that the helicopters that had been waiting on the Lurp chopper pad were now being diverted to provide emergency medevac for the wounded on Culculine. Wolverine nodded and passed the word on without comment.
    “No support,” thought Marvel, forcing himself to smile his sappiest smile so