3. What Commanders Owe

Private Lan was nineteen years old and had been in the field for eleven days. She was also, at this moment, the only reason six people were still alive. When the flanking move went wrong—enemy patrol where the map said there was none, which was becoming a theme—Lan had made a call that nobody had asked her to make. She had broken left, drawing fire away from the pinned-down cluster of soldiers behind the rock formation, taken a graze across her shoulder for the trouble, and made it to cover on the opposite side of the trail. The patrol had gone after her. The six soldiers had escaped. Dung found her twenty minutes later, pressing her jacket against the wound with one hand and reloading her rifle with the other. She looked up when he crouched beside her, and her expression was not relief or fear. It was the careful blankness of someone deciding whether to feel something later. "Can you move?" he asked. "Yes." "Does it need stitching?" "Probably." He signaled Dr. Phuong forward. While the medic worked, Dung sat beside Lan and looked at the forest. "That was a good call," he said. "It was the only call." "Not everyone sees that in time." She said nothing. Phuong worked efficiently, her movements practiced and calm. From somewhere uphill, there was distant gunfire—Hieu's group, which meant the distraction had started. "Captain," Lan said. "Yeah." "The six soldiers. Are they through?" "Three are. We're collecting the others." She nodded. The blankness in her face shifted slightly, and he saw something underneath it—not relief exactly, but something adjacent to it. The quiet satisfaction of a cost that turned out to be worth paying. Dung understood it. He had felt it himself, after his first major action, years ago. The understanding that you could make the right call and still bleed for it, and that the bleeding didn't make it the wrong call. "You'll need a week off that shoulder once we're out," he said. "I'll be fine in four days." "A week," he repeated. "That's not a suggestion." She almost smiled. "Yes, sir." They heard Phuong snap her kit shut. Uphill, the firing had intensified, which meant Hieu was fully engaged. They had maybe six minutes. Dung stood and helped Lan to her feet. "Stay on my left. Don't be a hero twice in one morning." "Understood." They moved into the trees, and the hill closed around them like a fist.