_______________
An hour later, after driving miles through the rainforest, Ortega arrived at the United States Marine Corps recon base camp. Inside the fortified camp, he crept to the armorer's van surrounded by stacked layers of sandbags.
The rain pounded the metal roof of the van, masking his entrance. Storage lined one wall of the long, narrow space and a workbench took up half the other wall. Shadows smothered the small desk at the far end of the van. To one side of the desk was a file cabinet that Ortega had searched a few times without Ethan's knowledge. His eyes settled on Lance Corporal Wilson, Ethan's assistant, who was bent over the bench working on a weapon. The man was an idiot; a fucking lowlife fool.
"Hey, man, did you pick up the fucking weapons at division?" Ortega asked.
Wilson yelped and jumped. "Asshole!" he said, and turned revealing the Ka-Bar he was holding close to his body with the blade's edge facing Ortega.
Ortega laughed. "You're such a fucking jerk."
Wilson blushed and put the knife away. "They're here." He went toward the back of the van, returned with a crate, and put it on the bench. "It makes me nervous when you arrive this late to pick up the goddamned weapons. What if Ethan comes back early? What the hell would I say?"
"You worry too much, man." Ortega reached into a pocket for a roll of South Vietnamese piasters, and threw the money on the counter.
"You bastard," Wilson said. "I am taking all the risks. If Ethan find out what I'm doing, he'll skin me alive. Do you know how crazy these fucking recon Marines are?"
"And do you know the strings I had to pull to get you, a regular piss-ant jarhead, assigned to this unit as its assistant armorer?"
Ortega stared with scorn at the lance corporal, and said, "Nothing will go wrong if you do as you are told." He stopped talking and glanced at the wall clock behind the desk when a helicopter roared overhead. The thin metal roof of the van vibrated from the backwash. He knew it was the evening ass-and-trash flight to the division area at Chu Lai fifty miles away.
Once the noise of the slick was gone, Ortega continued. "You have nothing to worry about, alright, man? Soon, Ethan will be working for me."
Wilson bared his teeth and pushed his face toward Ortega. "That's easy for you to say. You don't know the bastard. He lives by the rules."
"It's in the bag, man." Ortega wrapped a poncho around the crate with the two M-60s in it. He shouldered the weapons and went to the door. "Now, cool it. Tonight I'll make my pitch to Ethan. Then you won't have anything to worry about."
He left the van and went to his Jeep thinking he would have to kill Wilson soon. The man was unreliable and unstable.
___________________________
§ “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.
