Goin Goine aceite collecting spit, and when he spat it came out green. Bits of algae swam in the bubbles. His hands were caked with slime. He could feel the muck in his boots, the softness; he could see it like grease on the others. The smell was thick. Harold Mur- phy took off is trousers and used them to clean his big gun. Eddie wiped the radio, getting it ready for the lieutenant, and Oscar and Vaught and Caceiato began disassembling their weapons. When the lieutenant was finished with his calculations, he moved to the radio and made the call. He spoke crisply. He read off the coordinates and asked for a marking round. ‘They waited. Looking down, Paul Berlin saw flat brown paddies stretching off in every direction. The village of Hoi An was dead. There were no birds or animals. The sun made the paddies seem clean. From high up everything seemed clean, He tried not to think about Pederson. The way the cold came, nightly cold, and then the incredible heat. He wiped his hands on his shirt and rinsed out his mouth and tried not to think about it ‘The radio buzzed. There was a whining sound. The marking round opened high over the southeast corner of Hoi An. ‘The lieutenant called in an adjustment and asked for white phosphorus. ‘And again the whine. White phosphorus burned the village. Kill it,” Paul Berlin said. ‘The lieutenant watched the village burn. Then he went to the radio and ordered a dozen more Willie Peter, then adozen HE, ‘The rounds hit the village in thirty-second intervals. The village went white. The hedges swayed. A vacuum sucked in quiet and a wind was made. Hoi An glowed. Trees powdered, ‘There was the scalding sound of oxygen being used. Sitting on their rucksicks, the men watched black smoke open in white ‘smoke. Splinters of straw and wood sprinkled down, and there ‘was light in the village like fashbulbs exploding in sequence, and then a melting, and then heat. Even high on the hill they 7B Fire the Hole felt the heat. Something liquid seemed to run through the center of the village. The uid boiled. It burned and ran off into the paddies. “Kill it," Paul Berlin said, but without malice. The lieutenant returned to the radio. Next came alternating Willie Peter and HE, first white, then black. The men did not cheer or show emotion. They watched the village become smoke. Rounds pounded the smoke. The trees and huts and hedges and fences were gone. White ash uttered down. Something gleamed in the smoke, as at the center of a furnace, and the rounds kept falling. There was very little sound. A light, puffy tremble. Oscar Johnson smiled with each explosion, but otherwise the men seemed blank, Then they began firing. They lined up and fired into the burn- ing village. Harold Murphy used the machine gun, The tracers could be seen through the smoke, bright red streamers, and the Willie Peter and HE kept falling, and the men fired until they were exhausted, The village was a hole. ‘They spent the night along the Song Tra Bong. They bathed in the river and made camp and ate supper. When it was night they began talking about Jim Pederson. It was always better to talk about it.