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Show Flying - 192 could s t i l l save your officers. You could s t i l l do your duty. Slowly and q u i e t l y , John Henry pulls his carbine back up through the screen of leaves that hides him. With great care not to make the s l i g h t e s t sound, he puts the safety catch back on. Down below the aggressors pull the pins on their grenades and a l l together throw them. One, thrown with a fine sense of aim, lands in the middle of the table. The other two land on the grass beside i t . Instantly the white clouds boil up with a fierce hiss and the happy group in the valley disappears. The three s i l e n t aggressors slide quietly back down into the brush. Smiling John Henry s i t s quiet in his tree and watches his officers emerge one by one from the cloud, coughing, spitting and crying, trying very hard to get r i d of the white gas that eats away at the soft tissues of nose and eyes, walking around in c i r c l e s wiping at their faces. The cooks and KP's have r e t r e a t e d to a safe distance upwind of i t a l l and are looking on with i n t e r e s t. "Halt!" says John Henry to the empty evening a i r . "Halt or I ' l l f i r e ." He slips off his safety catch and fires into the sky, then works the bolt back and forth and fires again. "There were three of them, sir," says John Henry to the colonel who has climbed the ridge and stands in front of him with red eyes and running nose. |