Soon he would be dead and his body would decompose rapidly as special designed micro-organisms did their work.

Can't have the prototypes falling into enemy hands, he thought, not that it matters much now.

"Get gone, Sarge," croaked Carlo. Travis nodded. He looked towards Bill-boy who had just seemed to notice Carlo for the first time. The Green's face was transformed by fury. With his necklace of human teeth he looked suddenly wild and barbaric. The look he gave Travis made Travis back away.

"Let's go," Travis said. Bill-boy shook his head and spat at Travis's feet. They stared at each other for a long tense moment. Travis heard a scream. It sounded like Chad. Bill-boy wheeled and ran off into the night.

Travis was torn by indecision. A part of him wanted to stay and fight, to die along with the Greens, to end the fear and disgust he constantly felt.

Another part of him urged him to flee headlong into the night. He stood transfixed. His mind held a seething mass of conflicting impulses and thoughts, a maelstrom of emotion that could easily become either panic or unreasoning berserk fury. His senses were preternaturally keen. He could hear movement in the undergrowth around him.

Get control, he told himself. Take a deep breath. Take another one.

Think. The information on Soviet greens was too important, he had to get it back. By an effort of will he forced himself to move. He had found a reason to do it. It wasn't a good one but it would do. Tomorrow he could look for another. He wasn't going to give up.

It was a long time before the sounds of gunfire faded behind him.

8. Gunship.

The whir of helicopter rotors above him was almost deafening. He stared near mindlessly into the jungle canopy that rushed by below.

"Jesus, Travis, you look rough," Kyle had said when they picked him up at the rendezvous point. Travis hadn't answered. He had just clambered aboard the chopper.

"Where are the Greens?"

"Dead." Greens don't surrender and they can't be taken prisoner, biological alterations had seen to that.

"Pity. They were good boys. Still, life is cheap."

"Yes.