Profane Men by Rex Miller

treacherous.
    â€œAwwwwwww, fuck.”
    â€œPissin’ fuckin’ rain.”
    â€œAh cain’t see shit.”
    â€œFuckin’ perfect,” I mutter.
    â€œHow’s
this
shit for some palatable essence, motherfucker,” D’Allesandro says.
    â€œPalpable
essence, you dumb honkie, chuck, whitebread skuzzbag dago greaseball of a shit-for-brains motherhumper guinea cunt,” I correct him gently.
    â€œThat’s what I said, asshole, whyn’cha take your K-Bar and clean the wax out of your fuckin’ ears.”
    â€œHowja like me to take and clean the wax out of your fuckin’ ass, you spaghetti-suckin’ batsa fongool of a wop-ass eye-talian slime sack.”
    â€œIncoming!” somebody says, and we laugh as the rain really opens up with a vengeance, coming down hard out of the southwest or whatever fucking direction, out of a sky that is getting lighter instead of darker.
    The ceiling just descends and suddenly the icy bullets are thunking down out of the sky in brittle, horizontal sheets. When the fuck did you ever see rain like this back in the world? Fucking never happen. Only here in this godforsaken armpit of a country did the rain come out of nowhere to haul off and kick some serious ass.
    It comes exploding out of a gorgeous, hot, sunny sky: stinging, stabbing, sluicing down necks, smashing covers, collapsing poncho hootches, drenching windshields, drowning tanks, gathering in giant fucked-up puddles, enormous damn quagmires that could eat an APC, monstrous, equipment-devouring black holes that could turn a whole firebase into a dirty red loblolly of mud the consistency of concrete with a hard-on. Incoming.
    Max Frost and the Troopers are singing in the rain over Dusty’s PRC as it comes hammering our beat butts. He is trying to find the KILL signal so that lightning will strike his PRC and he will be medevaced back to a hospital in Tokyo or some damn place, where a young nurse who looks like Raquel Welch will come and sit on his face — or the other way around, whatever flies.
    â€œRamrod One, Toledo Six Actual, over,” the El Tee says.
    Fawwwzzzrrr
“ — copy, Toledo Six.”
    â€œToledo Blade’s Sierra Tango is a klick to the November of Lima Zulu Sierra Fox, Ramrod, over.”
    Craaawwwwzzzzzrrrrrr.
    â€œRamrod One. Six Actual, how you read, over?”
    Rzzzzz
“ — you lumpy chicken, Six, over.”
    â€œYou got a copy on Toledo Blade’s Sierra Tango about one klick from our earlier Lima Zulu over?”
    â€œCopy, that is a rog. Proceed to Alternate and establish your November Delta Papa, over?”
    â€œCopy that, Ramrod.”
    â€œWe gonna
stay
out here?” Vandervoort asks rhetorically.
    â€œThat’s a big, fat rog there, Dutchman.”
    â€œO Dau?”
    â€œKong Biet, motherfucker, wipeass me?”
    â€œAaaahhhh, bust my balls, fer shit’s sake.”
    â€œWe probably go back to that village and sleep in the water buffalo pen,” Big Merle adds helpfully.
    â€œ. . . cannot be exaggerated,” a voice blasts out of the RTO’s radio.
    Dusty touches a knob and there is a screaming rape-victim noise, a sudden, mind-ripping
sccccccrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
    â€œAhhhhhh! Shit!”
    â€œDamn it, get that shit off!” A fingernail-down-blackboard electrojolt penetrates my fog, and I try to grab hold of the slick sleeve of what passes for reality as it whips by.
    Slowly I turn. I quickly gulp a handful of quarter grains and take a swig of deliciously hot and nasty canteen water. I shrug off various circulatory and respiratory malfunctions and drive on.
    That was all I needed. I have the mercenary’s basic necessities: I am trilingual (broken French, pig Latin, and mother tongue), expert with a blow-gun, I have read all the dialectic doctrine (Hart, Shaffner, and what’s-his-name . . . ), and I have my autographed picture of Eric Ambler. What more do I need