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Ethan rolled on his side and stared through the fine mesh of the mosquito net at the other night-shrouded cots in the tent he shared with nineteen other Marines. After talking to the Colonel, he wanted blood and had spent several hours inside the camp looking for Ortega but did not find him. 

He heard the buzz of a runt mosquito inside his net and knew it had fattened itself on his blood and was now too big to escape through the net designed to keep its larger cousins out. 

Someone was snoring, and he watched Lance Corporal Emanuel Dodge leave to stand perimeter watch in a bunker. A moment later, there was a rustle of fabric followed by a long silence. 

It was stale, hot, and humid inside the tent. Ethan wiped oily sweat from his forehead. The mosquito net moved, and Ethan jerked when something cold and sharp pressed against his throat. 

"Don't make a sound, man," Ortega said in a whisper. "I'll cut your fucking head off, man, and no one will blink an eye that a traitor died in his sleep and saved the U.S. Army a court-martial." 

With Ortega's blade pressed against his throat, Ethan felt helpless and sure he was about to die.

"I've got you, man, and I am going to watch you fucking hang for what I did. When you are in that chopper flying to Da Nang, I want you to know what I am doing. I will be driving to that abandoned French rubber plantation where you fuck that gook bitch. I know that she will be waiting for you. I know that you two meet every fucking time her brother's away. I've watched you two doing it more than once." 

Ortega leaned in close and ran a wet tongue over Ethan's cheek and across his ear. Ethan wanted to throw up. 

"That's what I'm going to do to that gook pussy, man," Ortega said. "And I might slip my hog meat in her before I turn her fucking ass over to the ARVNs at China Beach. 

"Imagine what shape that lovely gook will be in when they're done with her. They will beat her when she does not do what they want. They will attach electrodes to those beautiful titties. She will get strapped face down on a fifty-five-gallon oil drum and raped in the ass by a dozen guards. Before they're done, she'll give her dead ancestors to them." 

"Bastard," Ethan managed to whisper hoarsely, and the blade lifted from his throat. He started to twist around so he could go for Ortega with his hands, but a loud and familiar click sounded next to his right ear. He knew it was a Browning M1911A1 forty-five caliber automatic pistol. 

There was one under his pillow that he had found in the jungle on a mission and had decided to keep because there was no record of it. 

For a long moment, Ethan stared into Ortega's cold, killer stare waiting for the man to blink but Ethan blinked first.

§ “Running with the Enemy” was awarded an Honorable Mention in General Fiction at the 2103 San Francisco Book Festival

§ Discover a new world of Publishing–-the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival Event held on May 18 at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in SF.