The Only Solution

The whistling rockets fall through the jungle canopy sounding like the shrill of a steam engine. They explode, blistering trees into flaming shards of wood. Orange bursts yell out of the dense greenery concealing innummerable machine gun nests. Decay and the pungent sting of burnt powder pollute the wet air.

Through the thick curly foliage, the uprooted unit scampers returning M-16 fire at the phantom enemy and screaming out in confusion. The enemy hurls more and more death into the scuttling numbers. Troops are being bowled over and destroyed like shattered pins in gunfire. The surviving soldiers drop into a group of eroding mortar holes, bottomed with warm, watery fudge grown from the last rainfall. All hidden, the racket of the guns joins the corpses strewn about the saturated ground.

"Platoon count!"

A brief pause. "Rodriguez. Wilkins. Shabolsky..."

"Cover, land mine!" A roaring detonation. A scream. And nothing.

"Who?" the Lieutenant commands from his hole.

"Arduet," someone answers. The count continues. "Diaturnon." "Smith." "Kiosoto." "Hansen." "Felder."

"I didn't hear your name, Wally."

"Ouch!" a voice pounces from behind a tree, followed by Wally running like a three-legged dog; he holds one hand in the other.

"Lieutenant!" he shrieks.

"Get down, Wally!" the Lieutenant orders the short soldier rapidly eliminating the distance to the officer's hole. "Get down!" Crackling bursts blare out with the suddenness of a spooked flock of roosting birds. His shirt is shredded by the hot lead. Wally falls to his knees, unable to speak; he grimaces; he clenches his muddy fists. Several bullets punch holes in his helmet, still secured to his head. His face runs wet with blood -- he coughs and slumps over; a weakly snake-bitten hand hangs like a snow-laden branch over the hole.

"Corpsman!" screeches the Corporal also in the Lieutenant's hole.

Softly, "Just a corpse-- he's dead, Corporal," affirms the Lieutenant. "Don't think about it, soldier." He withdraws a screwdriver. "Since we're pinned down, let's listen to the shortwave. Maybe we can get a channel from the States." The Lieutenant begins work on the radio. "Got a girl back home, Corporal?"

"Niekro." "Krunk."

"Yeah. Doris, Doris Delaney. Boy, sir, I miss her. The way I used to lay my head in her lap; and have her make curls in my hair. We would just sit, talk, imagine animals in the clouds."

A brief exchange rings through the air. "Ahhh!"

"Wilkins got it!"

"Lieutenant, did you ever see the movie Platoon?" The Corporal's moist eyes await an answer.

"Believe so, kid." The Lieutenant does not look up.

"Everything around here reminds me so much of that movie," he glances and recoils at Wally staring at him. The smell of the dead soldier's burnt flesh lays heavy in the air. "Jungles, Communists, blood..."

"Hey Billy, don't look at him." The Lieutenant covers Wally's face with a helmet.

"Are we here for the right reason, sir?"

The Lieutenant forces himself to meet eyes with Billy. "I'll tell ye, I don't want any Communism in my home town, no brother, not anywhere in the States if I can help it." He finishes fidgeting with the radio. Gunfire starts racking the atmosphere again, but farm some distance away.

The Lieutenant mumbles aside, "'re closing."

"What?" asks Billy.

"Ah, maybe not the right reason; wars like this are perfect proof of boredom." Static clears from a channel to reveal the President entertaining questions from the press.

"Mr. President, how many American troops are in Nicaragua right now and how far have they advanced?"

"Well, Marsha, "The President begins composed and eloquent, "We have 50,000 troops presently engaged in military operations backed by much of our Caribbean fleet. The marines have advanced many units nearly to Managua itself."

The Lieutenant leans back, frustrated, "'Many,' I counted 10 men -- "

"Eight," inserts Billy.

"-- eight men of the advanced units, and dwindling."

"We're never gonna get back home, are we, sir?"

"Sure we will. I'll bet the Navy will take over and blast Managua real soon. We'll never get near the place." The rattling, trilling machineguns grow louder. Nearby, a shell erupts and casts mounds of humus-filled soil into the foxholes.

"Yes, indeed. The outlook is very good. Casualty rates are low, along the same lines as in the Granada invasion. There is enough material involved to guarantee the relative safety of our equipment and goals," assures the President.

"Sir, look, there's a leach on my arm." Billy watches the creature feast on his blood.

"Don't move, Corporal." The Lieutenant shakes his head slightly and produces his bayonet to flick the recalcitrant worm from Billy's flesh. The cacophony almost drowns out the President as the Sandinistas hound out and terminate hiding American troops.

"How expensive will this campaign be? Will the costs be defrayed by any diversion of funds?" The crowd groans at this distasteful allusion.

The President jumbles a few syllables and then recovers. "Do not worry, it'll be over soon, and not very expensive at all by modern standards."

The Lieutenant replaces the magazine of his weapon. "Put your bayonet on, Corporal."

"Ye-yes, sir." Bill straightens out his helmet and looks for his bayonet.

"Why is that, Mr. President?"

"You know, I just can't seem to remember -- "

The Lieutenant blows his whistle and all six men spring from their holes into the spiralling storm of death, yelling, "Charge!"

Everything in a 10-mile radius from Managua endures a great flash and is incinerated.

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I wrote this story in high school and pretty much represents the pinnacle of my fiction writing until I started writing again around 2004. After high school I switched to non-fiction.