When 'Rabbit' awakened hours later, he needed a moment to remember what had happended. But it soon came back to him. - They were dead... Hawkins, Briel... All of them...

But he heard the Searge breathing besides him. So, thanks to god, he was not completely left alone in this hopeless situation, this green hell.

"Searge?" the young soldier whispered. "Searge." He shook the man's shoulder.

His commanding officer reacted with a suprising level speed when he all of the sudden awoke and like instictively grabed his throat. Completely surprised he felt to the floor. The Searge was now sitting on him pressing his thumbs merciless in his neck, making him unable to take breath. Rabbit gasped, fought... but lost.

The Searges blue eyes were empty, filled with hatred. This was no more a man. This was a merciless machine, built by the military and years of gruesome combat. The spit ran down the Officer's chin as he flashed his teeth, heavily breathing.

"So this is how I die?" Rabbit thought. "Chocked by one of my own comrades?" His mind rejected that thought, but the body had no air anymore and thatfor no more power to resist anymore. His arms, with which he had tried to get the attacker away from him before now fell, hung useless besides him.

Everything went blur...

"R... Rabbit......?" Life suddenly came back to the eyes of the Seargent, when he came back to think and realized whom he was attacking there.

"AFFFFFF!" Instictively Rabbit took a long deep breath, when the merciless hands of his opponent finally let go of him. He rolled around the floor, while the Searge without any noticable sign of emotional display got up and just growled.

"Never sneak up on me like this again, boy."

Rabbit was just grabing his aching throat, trying to get some breath again. His lungs were burning like hell. But it slowly got better and better. - Oh thank god, he was still alive.

The Searge didn't pay him to much attention anymore. Instead he checked his handgun. They had gone for the wash in the river so hasty before that even the older veteran had simply forgotten to unstrap his sidearm. He carefully disassembled the weapon analyzing each and every part individually. Everything looked good so far. Might work, as long as the ammunition was still working. It had still dried, but had been exposed to water and so it was to be doubted if it would be still good.

The Searge reassembled the gun and aimed into the darkness of the night.

-Rachack- The sled was still fine, but to check if the ting was actually still working would require a test. He decided not to practize one for the moment. These 'chinks' were sly and could be damned silent.

"I don't trust this one anymore. Got wet." he resumed without even looking at Rabbit. "What you got?" The younger soldier tapped his sidearm and his knife with his left hand. With the right one he still massaged his hurting throat.

"Two knifes, two potentially useless guns, one handgrenade. No good." he resumed. "Gotta get our hands on some weapons, greenhorn. Won't be able to get out of this without some."

------------

The boobytrap was simply built. Some wire out of the hollow handle of the combatknife, one handgrenade, but when the two Charlies walked into it, it turned out to be quite effective. Rabbit even hesitated for a second when the searge and him stepped nearer.

The bodies of the two men were gruesomly mutilated. The young soldier was unsure if they were Viet Cong's or just simple farmers at least they had worn baskets with goods on their backs. One of the poor bastards had been unlucky enough to not die immediately. He screamed his heart out in pain with his own blood slowly forming an ongrowing puddle under his body. Not for to long, since the Searge chose this occasion for testing his sidearm. The bullet mercifully ended his pain.

"See, that's german craftsmenship. Mud, water, you name it: Still works!" The officer grinned while holding up his 'Luger'. "Try out yours."

Luckily it didn't matter anymore. So Rabbit did as told and realized that his standard sidearm didn't resist the water as good as the Searge's weapon. It just gave of a clik. It had become useless.

They searched the corpses of the two asians. Both of them had worn weapons. They obtained an AK-47, which the Searge took, and an old hunting rifle for Rabbit. Also a small ammount of ammunition was found.

One of the baskets contained only leather stripes was only full of leather stripes, whuich weren't of any use to the two men. Gladly the other one turned out to contain fruits, so the two hungry GIs sat down and had a meal.

Good thing. Because in Rabbit's oppinion the Searge could quite badly need it. He looked all bad. His skin had become pale and he had dark shadows under his eyes. And he couldn't really remember the man to be that thin. His uniform in some areas seemed lose on him. The young infanterist had memories of the officer as an huge giant of impressive stature, but looking at him closer at him now he seemed to be of quite average size. Well, sometimes the mind seems to fools you, he knew that. Especially in drastic situations like this.

"O.k., soldier. This is our situation." The Searge sat down on a log nearby, taking out his army-knife which had a little Compass attached to it. Our only chance is to get to get to the camp in Nihan Kayu. "The older soldier examined one of his wounds while talking. They were awfully red, but at least seemed to heal astonishingly quickly.

"In a civilized country we would be able to make the distance in a day." He ripped a piece of fabric of his sleeve and knoted it around his neck to prevent the injury there from starting to bleed again.

"But in this cursed hell of a jungle it will take take us propably about three. So get ready, rookie. You gotta become more then you were if we want to get through this shit."

He looked directly into the eye of Rabbit.

"Whenever it comes to the rough road I kinda like to know who I'm walkin' with. So what's your first name, boy?"

"J.. Jake." The younger man was surpised by that move. The Searge haed uswed to treat his men like cattle. Like exchangable work material... Well, maybe one learns to act this way over time when everyone who's around can be dead meat the next day

"'J-Jake'?" The Searge laughed. "So Jake it is." The Searge loaded his AK-47 and made sure that it was ready to shoot. "Get some more self confidence Jake. We two gonna face damned Charlie all on our own. That's gonna take some guts."

Rabbit just nodded, knowing what his commanding officer wanted to state.

"By the way.... My name's Alex." This was the first time Jake could remember he had seen a slight smile on the Searge's face.

"So come on soldier. Let's get going. We ain't got all day."

Carefully, with their rifles ready, the two men got off the small path and vanished between the leafs of the jungle...

------------

"Augh!" It was a clean hit right into the heart. The poor sucker fell were he stood when Rabbit's bullet hit him in the chest. He was propably dead before he reached the ground.

The other "chinks" surprisingly didn't seem to be scared by that and kept on storming forward, shouting out their anger while firing wildly. - Stubborn asian mentality. You just gotta 'love it'."

Luckily they seemed to have absolutely no experience or training whatsoever and therefor their aim was poor and the bullets just hit the ground bneath the two GIs.

"Sir! Hit 'em!" Jake shouted out in panic.

"I'm on it, man. I'm on it!"

The Searge fumbled around with the reloading mechanism of his Kalashnikov.

Was it just Jake or did the man really have become smaller? No, he wasn't halluzinating. The officer seemed now quite small. He himself surely overtowered him now by a head.

"FIRE! ALEX! FIRE!"

Finally the small officer seemed to have managed to reload his weapon. He got his head up and fired a Salvo into the enemies direction. But his arms seemed to be to weak to compensate the recoil of the weapon.

Out of control the barrel went like immediately upwards and most of the bullets just disturbed some of the countless mosquitos up over them in the air.

Usually Rabbit would have treated an commanding officer with much more respect. But this unusualy embarassing performance of the Searge was more than enough to let him forget about his behaviour.

It was also his ass that was on the line and he wanted to be damned if he didn't try everything, to the last breath, to get out of this alive.

So he finally just grabed the machine pistol out of the Searges hands. He was a trained machine gunner. He was meant to do this, trained to and (at that very moment) more than willing to do it. To save his own life. It surprised him actually how easy it turned out to take the gun out of the officers hands. But he had no more time to think about it as he immediately started to aim at their oncoming oppenents.

The AK-47 sung it's deadly song. The cartridge cases danced along with the awfull sound through the air, flashing in the last sunlight of the evening.

The one on the left... -Baharaang!-

Behind the bushes... -Baharrrrat!-

Alongside the tree... -Bahararararatktktktktk-

-Clic- The empty magazine fell out in the mud.

...They were dead. - All of them.

"Searge?"

"G... Good work, Jake. - They just got me in a wrong moment, boy."

No, that wasn't the case. The Searge had just handled his weapon poorly, Rabbit knew that. He had WHITNESSED it... And didn't understand it. This man was one of the most combat-proved soldiers he knew. An AK-47, one of the standard-weapons of this war shouldn't have been a unknown thing to this old dog.

Nevertheless the commander had simply handled it like a rookie. - And this man was known to be a shooting ace!

Well, maybe it was due to his health-status. The man had thinned down in just two days in an enormous rate. Jake could even swear that the Searge had shrunk several inches. But that were not the only changes that were noticable...

His chest and waist seemed to have swolen noticable. Might be Malaria or something. He didn't know much about all the medical stuff. He was just a soldier for christ's sake. Jake decided that it wouldn't make much sense to tell the poor comrad about his questionable condition. But he knew he had to get the man to the medics as soon as possible.

"Don't mind, Searge. - I got 'em..."

His commander to his surprise kept staying passively behind the little earth hill (was the Searge really shivering or was it just his imagination?) while Jake searched the killed enemies for ammunition and supplies...