Chieftains

Browning ducked his head to light mother cigarette in the shelter of his overalls. How long had it been since the last battle…since Dong Ha? 1968! Seventeen years! He had been nineteen years in the cavalry! Good God, be was an old man…thirty-eight! Maybe that wasn't too old, though. Too old for what? He hadn't got any special plans! He didn't want to quit the service to open a shop, or become a salesman, or find a job as a clerk in some government bureau; he liked things as they were…nicely regulated…no hassle. Retirement? He didn't think about it too often. A small house somewhere, in a small town…a stoop to relax on…wasn't that what all vets wanted? A place to fade away in.

Shit! He was getting maudlin. Browning had never married; it seemed like making trouble for yourself, perhaps he would sometime…settle down. Settle down! Jesus, you were in the army or out of it! Being army was being settled; what the hell more did you need?

Women. Browning grunted, dropped the butt of the cigarette and ground it out with his heel. He had few illusions about his looks; some guys were handsome, he wasn't. Some guys found women everywhere, he didn't. His face hadn't been much to write home about before Vietnam; it was worse afterwards. A long wound from the centre of his forehead, running across the bridge of his nose and down his cheek, made him look like the loser of a knife fight. Because he was balding a little at the front of his head, he kept his hair cropped short. And he wasn't some tall lean clothes-horse who could make every suit he wore look straight out of Fifth Avenue; he had the build of a middleweight, broad shoulders, heavy chest and narrow hips. Out of uniform, he looked like an all-in wrestler. It frightened women…well, most of them…he couldn't even smile straight with the wound, it had severed a couple of cheek muscles. A grin from Browning could make some women think he was suing them up for a chain-saw murder! Most didn't take the risk to find out what he was like underneath.

'The captain's flapping his jaw on the air.' Podini, the Abrams' gunner, was leaning out of the turret above him.

'So what does the nice guy say?' The squadrons' leader wasn't Browning's favourite officer. As a graduate of West Point Military Academy, he had a habit of treating his NCOs like first-year plebs.

'He thinks he's Terry and the Pirates,' said Podini. 'Says gung-ho and all that kind of crap.' Podini cleared his throat and spat into the darkness. 'Remember the Alamo!'

'He said that?'

Podini chuckled. 'Well, not exactly. But he sure meant to.'

'He's hoping it's going on tape back at HQ, so's maybe he'll get a field promotion and a Distinguished Service Cross…it's his fuckin' bullshit. He should have stayed with the Iron Brigade. I got my own plans.'

'Like what?'

'Like staying alive. If the captain wants to play Buck Rogers, he can do it on his lonesome. I don't aim to buy the farm for someone else's benefit.'

Browning shivered, pulled his collar closer to his neck and wiped a drop of moisture from his nose with the back of his gloved hand. He stamped his feet a few times, wondered why the hell he was standing out in the chill air, and clambered back up into the turret. He could smell the scent of sweat and fuel oil drifting up from the fighting compartment and decided to keep his head and shoulders outside for a few more minutes. He leant against the metalwork, it was ice-cold; below him the hull of Utah was white-dusted with hoar frost. To the north and west the stars were still bright in a dark sky.

There was soft music, just audible outside the tank. It came from the driving compartment where Mike Adams was relaxing, listening to a tape recorder. Adams' driving compartment was as customized as the US army would permit…which was only a little. Given a free hand, he would have filled it with gadgets, stereo, additional lighting, a coffee machine, mirrors. As it was, he managed to get away with an imitation leopard-skin seat cover, and his Japanese tape recorder. An official request to be allowed to fit a cigar-lighter had been met with a horrified refusal from the captain. Not only was smoking forbidden inside a tank because of fuel fumes but, in any case, Adams was informed, a cigar-lighter was aesthetically out of place in an American fighting vehicle. Adams had retaliated by bribing a German waiter to post 'No Smoking' notices at various strategic places throughout the officers' mess; they had spent an uncomfortable week smoking outside on its terraces before they found it had nothing to do with their colonel. A New Yorker, from Winfield Junction, twenty- four year old Mike Adams looked on' the XM1 tank, Utah, as the kind of supercharged super-rod he had always wanted as a kid.