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In the moonlight the field was a wan silver and...
5:24 AM, Sunday, January 24, 2010
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In the moonlight the field was a wan silver and the grove an impenetrable black-green far deeper than the blanched transparent shadows that surrounded itBehind him and to his right he could feel the huge body of the mountain glowing oddly in the darkness like a vast monument illumined by spotlights
For perhaps five minutes he peered at the field and the grove, thinking of nothing at all, his eyes and ears the only part of him wholly aliveThe tension with which he watched, the taut pressure in his chest was pleasurable, complete in itself, like a man in the first stages of drunkenness when he is content to feel only the symptoms of his intoxicationMartinez was holding his breath but he was unaware of it
Nothing moved at allHe heard no sounds besides the whispering of the grassSlowly, almost leisurely, he slipped over the ledge and squatted in the field searching for a shadow in which he might dolce and gabbana bucket handbag hideBut there was no approach to the grove where he would not have to pass through the moonlightMartinez debated for an instant, and then sprang to his feet, stood in complete view of the grove for a startling, terrifying second and then dropped to the ground againHe would have taken them by surpriseThe chances were likely that if there was anyone in the grove they would have been startled enough to fire upon him
Quietly, he stood up again and loped quickly across half the distance of the field, dropping behind a rock with a twisting sprawling motionHe ran another thirty yards, halted behind another rockThe borders of the grove were less than fifty feet awayHe listened to his own breathing, watched the moonlight trace an oval of shadow beyond the rockAll his senses told him that there was no one in the grove, but it was too dangerous to trust themHe stood up for a full second, and then dropped down balenciaga replica handbags againIf they hadn't fired by nowHe felt fatalistic about itThere was no way to cross an open field in the moonlight without being seen
Martinez glided across the rest of the distance separating him from the groveOnce inside the trees, he paused again, flattened himself against a trunkHe waited until his eyes became acclimated to the darkness and then he crept forward from tree to tree, separating the brush with his hands in his passageAfter fifteen yards he came to a path and stopped, peering to left and rightThen he paced along it to the border of the grove again, halting before a small emplacement, into which he kneltThere had been a machine gun there several days before -- he reasoned this by the fact that the holes for the studs of the tripod were no damper than the surface of the emplacementBesides, the machine gun had pointed toward the rock ledge; the Japanese would have used it that afternoon omega planet ocean watches in the ambush if it had still been there
Slowly, cautiously, he examined the periphery of the groveThe Japanese had left, and by the number of empty ration cartons, the size of their latrine trench, he estimated that they must have made up a full platoonRecon had run into much less than that; it could mean only that most of their platoon had been withdrawn a day or two before, and the men who had attacked them were a rear guard, who had retreated up the pass shortly afterward
Why?
As if to answer him, he could hear faintly the sound of the artilleryIt had been firing frequently all that dayJaps go back to help stop attackThis seemed reasonable, and yet he was perplexedSomewhere farther up the pass there might or might not be some JapaneseMartinez shivered, holding the damp rotting cardboard wrapper of a ration in his handHe had a vague rather frightening vision of soldiers moving in the chanel tote handbags darkness, stumbling from place to placeHe would go groping into thatHe shook his head like an animal bridling at an unexpected sensationThe silence and darkness of the grove were wearing upon him, eroding his courage
Martinez wiped his foreheadHe was sweating and he realized with surprise that his shirt was quite wet and very chillHis tension had subsided for a moment or two, and it made him aware of his fatigue and the nervous shock of being awakened an hour or two after he had fallen asleepThe hamstrings of his thighs felt taut, quivered a littleBut he did not consider at all the idea of turning back
Carefully he followed the trail through the grove toward the passIt extended for several hundred yards through brush and forest not quite thick enough to be jungleOnce his face brushed against a long flat leaf and a few insects darted in fright across his cheekHe flicked them off, his fingers moist with pink prada handbag anxi
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